Stories about enslaved fishermen on factory ships occasionally appear on BBC and other news sources. A recent one tells us about the interdiction of one such ship by Thai police, which then lets the ship go. Apparently Thai fishing industry is desperate for workers, with the BBC reporting that “by the [Thai] Ministry of […]
There is a kind of romance around piracy. It is the romance of anti-authority figures and of a life lived not just in the margins but outside the boundaries. Just think about the masses of novels and films about piracy and the scholarship (and I will eventually write about Marcus Rediker’s extraordinary work). Or think […]
A facebook friend sent me a URL to a blogpost which introduced Sons of Sinbad by Alan Villiers… What struck me was the contention that the book was “probably the only work of western travel literature that focuses on the seafarers of the Arabian Peninsula.” I bought the book and read it cover to cover on a plane […]
Dubai Ports World runs London Gateway which will be competing against Felixstowe and Southampton to be the top container port in the UK. Like many other DPW concerns, there seems to be an iron (or ham-) fisted determination to not let workers unionise – although protests seem to have stymied this effort for now. I am hoping to visit the […]
I am really looking forward to my trip aboard a container ship… The ship above is a liquid natural gas carrier, so it will have a different feel, but the feeling of being on the seas… It seems to be the thing to do nowadays, even by historians who don’t work on the contemporary era. […]
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 […]
