Pirate Utopias is a strange little book – at once a bit disappointing and a portal to further discovery. The concept behind it is fabulous enough (about which more below) and the blurbs on the back -by Christopher Hill, Marcus Rediker, and Peter Linebaugh- give one whiplash until you read them closely and they all hold […]
From Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into the Night (thank you Anya!) EDMUND: You’ve just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They’re all connected with the sea. Here’s one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the trades. The old hooker driving fourteen […]
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 […]
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 […]
Sitting on a rooftop overlooking container ships leaving the port of Beirut and sailing into the haze of the Mediterranean and other container ships powering towards the port from the west makes me VERY VERY happy I am going to be spending the next few years of my life working on ships, ports, and shipping. […]
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. […]
I am ashamed to admit that I was a latecomer to the magic of Allan Sekula. Far too much of a latecomer. I discovered his stunning work on shipping and transport, last year; he died in August last year. His amazing film Forgotten Spaces stays with you, flashes of sound, slivers of images, whole stories, the mood […]
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 […]
