Thoughts on military mobilities, trade and capital accumulation, struggles over labour and citizenship rights in the making of transport infrastructures.
On second thought, it is not just the atmosphere of terror in the ship that makes Jahnn’s book so interesting – it is also George Lauffer. He is what Jahnn fabulously calls “the supercargo” alongside his sealed coffin-shaped secret cargo of many crates, which the seamen imagine may be filled with living or dead female […]
When I started my maritime-and-ports novel-reading adventure, three people suggested Hans Henny Jahnn’s The Ship to me. One of the three is an author I hold in awe, so I ordered the book (printed on demand by Amazon) – surprised that I couldn’t find the book in any form anywhere and that there was very little […]
My sleep last night was bookended by two sublime mysteries – the shipping forecast with its peculiar poetry which maps a kind of mysterious geography with gale warnings and low visibility Viking Forties Cromarty Forth Tyne Dogger Fisher German Bight Humber Thames Dover Wight Portland Plymouth Biscay Trafalgar FitzRoy Sole Lundy Fastnet Irish Sea Shannon […]
And it is He who tamed the Sea, that from it you might feed on flesh tender and fresh, and pull fineries to costume yourselves with, and see the ships plying its waters. That you might desire His bounty. Perchance you would give thanks. The Holy Qur’an, The Bee (16:14) Quoted from Engseng Ho, The […]
One of the things I have been thinking about as I prepare to start up my project is how to best organise the vast amounts of data I will need to use. Some of this data will come “ready-made” – already packaged and organised by various commercial and public vendors of data. Here I am […]
Before starting any project, I like to self-saturate with novels about a subject. It is one of the greatest pleasures of learning something entirely new, and it is a way to get a sense of the texture and richness of a place or a subject in ways that scholarly writing very rarely can convey. […]
