In this, the sixth episode of our Great Sea Fights series, we explore the remarkable events of 19 August 1812 when the powerful frigate USS Constitution fought and destroyed the British frigate HMS ...

This article is a detailed study of the costs involved in building warships of the period. It is based on Progress Books One, Two and Five. Direct comparisons between the costs of different vessels ...

Discusses the development of the visual signalling system known in its various forms as Semaphore, ranging from hand-held flags to tower-mounted rotating arms, using differing codes and languages at ...

The earliest map of London that has come down to our time is Wyngaerde’s panorama, dating from between 1543 and 1550. It provides a bird’s-eye view of the whole city, together with Westminster and ...

Customs records provide a rich source of information about individual vessels and their cargoes. The earliest regular information about ships and cargoes trading in English ports is found in such ...

Although ship design and construction did not change and Charles 1st’s Sovereign of the Seas would not have been out of place at Trafalgar, the seventeenth century marked a major transition in naval ...

This is the first episode of a two-part mini-series on the history of maritime special forces. In this episode we hear about the Second World War origins, development and early history of the SBS – ...

Part 7 of a series of articles drawn from the manuscript of the late Sir Oswyn Murray, originally planned as a volume in the Whitehall Series. This Part deals with the organisational structure of the ...

Between the mid-eighteenth century and 1900 almost all the figureheads on British warships were carved in the likeness of an individual man, woman, beast or bird, each of which was intended to ...

It is a long-standing assumption that the colour scheme of British warships between 1775 and 1815 changed from yellow hulls, through the yellow and black Nelson chequer to the ubiquitous black and ...

The article deals with the particular knowledge of certain parts of the sea acquired by local mariners, usually by tradition or from their own experience.

Book Review-‘The Myth of the Press Gang: Volunteers, impressment and the naval manpower problem in the late eighteenth century, by J. R. Dancy ...