The Mariner's Mirror Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Coffin Ships and The Plimsoll Line Nov 02, 2021

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In this episode Dr Sam Willis explores the troubling history of safety at sea. In the eighteenth century seafaring was a very dangerous business indeed: not only were navigation and safety systems limited but unscrupulous owners of merchant ships would deliberately send ships to sea over-laden, but with enormous insurance raised on the vessel. These became known as ‘Coffin Ships’. To make matters worse, sailors who had signed up for a voyage but then refused to sail in such vessels could be sent to prison. Appalled by such public flouting of responsibility one man - Samuel Plimsoll - took it upon himself to reform safety at sea, taking on the entire maritime establishment. Plimsoll eventually succeeded, but only after numerous knock-backs from politicians in the grip of maritime merchant interest. His solution to the problem, the ‘Plimsoll Line’ - being a safe load-line marked on the hull of a ship - changed seafaring forever and also marked a significant moment in popular democracy when the will of the British public – in this case for the protection of their mariners – was heard. To find out more, Sam speaks with Nicolette Jones, author of the multiple-award winning book ‘The Plimsoll Sensation: The Great Campaign to Save Lives at Sea.’

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Iconic Ships 11: HMS Warrior Oct 26, 2021

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In this episode Dr Sam Willis explores HMS Warrior, one of the most groundbreaking ships in the history of naval power. An iron-framed, iron-clad single-gundeck warship, launched in 1860 HMS Warrior defied categorisation and changed the way that seapower was both wielded and imagined. She was built in a period of intense rivalry between Britain and France when technology was advancing so rapidly that innovations existed alongside an entirely realistic fear that new inventions would undermine Britain’s existing naval supremacy. In this period steam would replace sail for propulsion; iron and then steel would replace wood for construction; exploding shells would replace solid iron shot for armament and they would be fired from rifled, breech loading guns that could fire further than could ever have been imagined. Warrior had more firepower than two standard wood ships of the line. Remarkably, Warrior still survives: she was decommissioned from active service in 1882, but survived being scrapped. In 1979 the ship was rescued for preservation having served as a fuelling pontoon in South Wales for 50 years. She can now be visited in all of her glory at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth: a most remarkable warship – a technological innovation in the business of war, but which never fired a single shot in anger: and the two were linked: warrior was so superior to any other warship at the time of its construction that its supremacy never had to be challenged in battle: she was the ultimate naval deterrent. To find out more, Sam speaks with Jeremy Michell, Senior Curator: Maritime Technologies at the National Maritime Museum in London.

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The Battle of Trafalgar Special, Part III: HMS Pickle Oct 22, 2021

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In this, a joining-together of our Great Sea Fights and Iconic Ships series we feature HMS Pickle, the small topsail schooner that was chosen to sail as swiftly as possible back to England with news of the British success at the battle of Trafalgar, and also with the tragic news of the death of the British fleet’s commander, Horatio Nelson. The story of how the battle dispatches made it all the way to London from Cape Trafalgar off the coast of Spain is quite remarkable, and is told brilliantly by Kathy Brown, Director of the Trafalgar Way – the overland route taken by the pickle’s commander, Richard Lapenotiere.

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The Battle of Trafalgar Special, Part II: Nelson's Wounds Oct 21, 2021

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Dr Sam Willis explores the many wounds that Nelson received in his life, as well as his fatal wound received at the Battle of Trafalgar. Sam speaks with Michael Crumplin, a retired consultant general and upper gastro-intestinal surgeon and Honrary Curator and Archivist at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Nelson was so damaged by a life of naval service it has been calculated that he would have received a total degree of disablement at 140% if assessed for war pension today: his right eye was damaged by flying earth at siege of Corsica in 1794; he developed a ‘fist-sized’ hernia when hit by flying timber at the battle of St Vincent in 1797; his arm was amputated after being hit by a musket ball at Tenerife, also in 1797; his forehead head was struck so hard, and cut so badly by flying debris at the battle of the Nile in 1798 that he thought he was gong to die. And then, at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 he was shot by a French marksman, the ball breaking his spine and puncturing a lung.

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The Battle of Trafalgar Special, Part I: The Eyewitness Accounts Oct 21, 2021

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Dr Sam Willis explores the Battle of Trafalgar through two eyewitness accounts, both from the decks of the Royal Sovereign, the flagship of Cuthbert Collingwood. Bringing a new perspective to the battle of Trafalgar is challenging, but many forget that, with Nelson receiving his fatal wound early in the action, command of the battle fell to his great friend, Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood on board the Royal Sovereign; in fact the battle dispatches written in the aftermath of the battle of Trafalgar are unique for fleet battles in the French revolution and Napoleonic wars because none of the letters is written by the fleet’s commander-in-chief – Nelson – because he died. This episode presents a reading of Collingwood’s private journal for the day of the battle of Trafalgar and five subsequent days in which the fleet was torn apart by one of the most ferocious storms in living memory; and also a reading of the logbook kept by one of the Royal Sovereign’s officers, Lieutenant, J. Simmond.

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Iconic Ships 10: Ark Royal Oct 14, 2021

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Today we are merging this month's theme on airpower with one of our running series – on iconic ships - in which we ask the curator of an existing historic ship to make the case for their ship being iconic or we ask a historian to make the case for a long-lost ship being iconic. Today we are certainly in the 'long-lost category' as the vessel in question - the carrier HMS Ark Royal - was torpedoed and sunk off Gibraltar in 13 November 1941.

HMS Ark Royal, launched in 1937, represented a breakthrough in the design of aircraft carriers and she went on to serve in crucial theatres at the beginning of World War Two that redefined the nature of air power at sea, being involved in U-Boat hunting, convoy protection, the key naval campaigns in Norway, Italy and Malta and the hunt of the German battleship Bismarck.

To find out more about this extraordinary ship Dr Sam Willis spoke with Matthew Willis, a writer of naval and aviation history. Matt has written numerous titles on the British Fleet Air Arm in the Second World War and interwar period, as well as a biography of 1940s test pilot Duncan Menzies, and runs the website NavalAirHistory.com.

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How to Drive an Aircraft Carrier Oct 12, 2021

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In this, the first of several episodes on the maritime history of airpower, Dr Sam Willis meets three Royal Naval flag officers to discuss the complexities and challenges of commanding and operating aircraft carriers. Sam's guests are Vice Admiral Jerry Kydd, the current Fleet Commander of the Royal Navy, who served as the very first commanding officer of the new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, launched in 2014 and the largest and most powerful vessel ever constructed for the Royal Navy; Rear Admiral David Snelson, who served in the Royal Navy between 1969 to 2006 on both Ark Royal 4 and Ark Royal 5, and was the Commander Maritime

Forces and Task Group Commander for Royal Naval forces in the second Gulf War of 2003; and Rear Admiral Roy Clare who commanded HMS Invincible 25 years ago, seeing operations in the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Arabian Sea and The Gulf, with Fleet Air Arm and Royal Air Force squadrons embarked. They discuss a commander's responsibilities with regard to aviation and airspace; the thorny issues of logistics, and how to manage fuel, food and spare parts; the formidable challenges of engineering both in terms of air engineering and weapons engineering, including radars, radios and satellite comms; the challenge of commanding people, of training and handing on skills; and the issues of Task Group command - how does a carrier fit into a Task Group? Does the captain of a carrier also act as the Commander of a task Group?

These remarkable insights from the recent (and sometimes very recent) past help us understand the development and use of carriers and airpower from its inception in the first quarter of the twentieth century until today.

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The Maritime History of World War 2 Oct 07, 2021

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This week we are exploring the maritime history of the Second World War with Professor Evan Mawdsley. For many years Evan was Professor of International History at the University of Glasgow. His recent book ‘The War for the Sea: The Maritime History of World War 2’ has recently won the prestigious Anderson Medal, awarded each year by the Society for Nautical Research for an outstanding book on maritime history. Evan traces events at sea from the first U-boat operations in 1939 to the surrender of Japan. He argues that the Allied counterattack involved not just decisive sea battles, but a long struggle to control shipping arteries and move armies across the sea. Covering all the major actions in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as those in the narrow seas, this book interweaves for the first time the endeavours of the maritime forces of the British Empire, the United States, Germany, and Japan, as well as those of France, Italy, and Russia. In this episode Dr Sam Willis spoke with Evan to find out more about his exciting work which challenges our existing understanding of the war.

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Iconic Ships 9: RMS Mauretania Sep 28, 2021

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This episode explores the fascinating history of RMS Mauretania, which was launched in 1906 and transformed shipbuilding and the expectations of passengers travelling on trans-Atlantic liners. After the launch of Mauretania, sea-travel and the maritime world was never the same again.

To find out more, Dr Sam Willis met with Max Wilson of the Lloyds Register Foundation to explore their archives. The Lloyds Register archives is the best place to go to explore the history of many ships, but particularly something as ground breaking as Mauretania because Lloyds were responsible for certifying the safety of the vessel – this means that there is a whole host of magnificent material to see there, letters, record books, ship plans, technical drawings - all of which reveal the ship and the achievements of her designers and builders in the most magnificent detail.

This episode is part of the 'Iconic Ships' series which features history's most iconic ships - including the Mary Rose, the Mayflower, HMS Hood, HMS Ark Royal, Titanic, USS Constitution, HMS Bellerophon (The Billy Ruffian), HMS Belfast, the Cutty Sark and the ss Great Britain, with many more to come! The video was filmed - so you can watch below to see some of the images we discuss.

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Iconic Ships 8: The SS Great Britain Sep 23, 2021

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Dr Sam Willis meets the team at the ss Great Britain in Bristol to discover why she deserves the title 'Iconic'. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and launched in 1843 she was to be a luxurious passenger ship the likes of which the world had never seen. The largest vessel afloat; the longest in the world; made of iron rather than timber; fitted with a steam engine of 1000 hp, the most powerful ever used at sea; driven with a propeller rather than paddle wheels, the proven and established technology; she was also fitted withsix masts: it’s not surprising that, at her launch she was described as ‘the greatest experiment since creation’. Left to rot in the Falkland islands after a remarkable and varied career, the ss Great Britain was brought back to Bristol, to the very dock in which she was built, where she has been conserved for the public to enjoy and learn about her extraordinary history. Sam speaks with Joanna Thomas, the ss Great Britain's Maritime Curator, and Nicola Grahamslaw, the ship’s conservation engineer to find out more.

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