The Mariner's Mirror Podcast

The battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 was the largest naval encounter in history and the most decisive naval battle of the Pacific War. By its end the Japanese navy had been eliminated as an effective fighting force and resorted to using suicide attacks. The battle was a huge, sprawling affair - not one battle but in fact four separate naval battles - each with its own distinctive characteristi...

On the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar of 1805 we look at a question that is central to the legend that grew up around the events of October 1805. How did a naval officer end up with a state funeral with no precedent for someone who was not a member of the Royal Family? How was death perceived in the Royal Navy of the Age of Sail and why did a heroic death matter so much? To find out more D...

In this, the second of our dramatisations of witness testimony given at the British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry into the Titanic disaster we hear from Fred Barrett, a stoker from Liverpool. Fred had been tasked with extinguishing a fire and was in one of the boiler rooms when the collision happened. If you are interested in what happened in the bowels of the ship during the sinking his testimony...

In this, the first of four dramatisations of witness testimony given at the British Titanic Inquiry of May 1912, we hear directly from Lady Duff Gordon. A First Class passenger, and one of only two passengers interviewed at the inquiry (the other being her husband), Lady Duff Gordon was also one of only three women to give testimony. Along with her husband, she was also one of only two witnesses t...

The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 led immediately to two major inquiries: one in America and one in the UK. The testimony in these enquiries provides a fascinating and valuable glimpse into the tragedy from the words of the people themselves who experienced it. And yet only recently have these testimonies become freely accessible online, thanks to a heroic effort by numerous volunteers working fo...

In the archives of the Lloyd's Register Foundation is a stunning hand-illustrated portfolio of the Rules of Composite Ships. These were a set of rules regulating the construction of this new type of vessel born of the industrial revolution. Half iron and half timber, these 'composite' ships transformed maritime capability whilst at the same time challenging existing knowledge of shipbuilding. The...

This is episode six of our special mini-series on the maritime history of China and it looks at the Maritime Silk Road. This fascinating topic is far richer and deeper than the name implies. On the one hand we discover all about the ancient maritime trade route by which silk was transported abroad from China – but as you will discover it is far more complicated than that – and far more interesting...

In this, the third of three dedicated episodes to women in maritime, Cecilia Rose speaks to Dr Nina Baker and Dr Antony Firth about women shipbuilders on the River Clyde and the River Tyne, as part of the ‘Rewriting Women into Maritime History’ project. Dr Nina Baker is an independent researcher who works on the history of women in engineering, focusing on the Clyde in Glasgow, whilst Dr Antony Fi...

In this, the second of three episodes dedicated to women in the maritime world, we look at the Lloyd's Register Foundation's ‘Rewriting Women into Maritime History’ project through an artistic lens. Cecilia Rose speaks to Erna Janine - a London based textile artist specialising in Japanese Freestyle Weaving, and Emilie Sandy - a photographer and visual artist focusing on portraiture and storytelli...

In this, the first of three dedicated episodes, we explore a new project designed to change our perceptions of the historical role of women in the maritime industry over the centuries. 'Rewriting Women into Maritime History' is run by the Lloyd's Register Foundation and brings together leading maritime organisations. One of the key aims of this project is to empower women by reframing the narrativ...

The British submarine HMS Poseidon sank off the Chinese coast during normal exercises in 1931 having struck a freighter. Just over half of her crew made it out of the hatches as she sank. Twenty-six remained trapped. Eight of those attempted to surface using an early form of diving equipment specifically designed for submarine escapes. Five of those survived and became national heroes. And then, a...

Of the 2,240 passengers and crew on board RMS Titanic on her fateful last journey, eight were Chinese, all travelling Third Class. Six of those eight survived, an exceptionally high survival rate for any given nationality. Remarkably, four escaped on the same lifeboat as the Titanic’ s owner J. Bruce Ismay, while another was the last person rescued alive from the water. Those six men were forgotte...

In the stores of the London Science Museum is a highly significant collection of ship models of Chinese junks. They were commissioned by Sir Frederick Maze who worked as the Inspector General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service from 1929-1943. Maze was a true Sinohpile and was particularly fascinated by Chinese maritime history. He lived in China at a time of rapid modernis...

This episode continues our mini series on maritime China with an episode on Chinese shipwrecks found in Southeast Asia and what they tell us about the development of Chinese shipping and trade from the ninth century onwards. The wrecks include the ninth century Belitung wreck, twelfth century Flying Fish, thirteenth century Java Sea, fifteenth century Bakau wreck, and from the seventeenth century...

A Ming Dynasty court eunuch, a diplomat, an explorer, a mariner, a Muslim…Zeng He lived from the 1370s to around 1433 and achieved what many have since considered to be impossible. Between 1405 and 1433 Zeng He commanded seven expeditionary voyages. He explored the East China Sea, South China Sea, up through the Straits of Malacca to the Bay of Bengal, around India and Sri Lanka to the Arabia...

The story of HMS Captain is one of the most shocking in naval history. Laid down in 1867 and, unusually, partly funded by the public, she was one of the most innovative warships ever constructed. She had a very low freeboard and two enormous rotating armoured gun turrets situated very close to the waterline in between the upper and lower decks. Turret ships were not a new invention but, hitherto,...

The Uluburun ship sank somewhere around 3,400 years ago near what is now Kas in Turkey and was discovered in 1982. The subsequent excavation was carried out at a time when underwater excavation was a new discipline and it had a profound change on the way both that we investigate underwater heritage and understand the ancient world. It still remains one of the oldest shipwrecks ever discovered and...

An episode that revels in the extraordinary mix of adventure, horror, myth and fact that makes maritime history the BEST type of history! – We’re finding out about the history of castaways: of people set adrift on open boats, marooned by accident or even on purpose on isolated islands. This is the history of being abandoned; of being adrift; of being alone. Many never came back and are lost to his...

Indigenous perspectives are a crucial and immensely valuable part of the broad narrative of Australian maritime history. Aboriginal people witnessed the arrival of Macassan, Dutch, French, English and American vessels as these people explored, sought out trepang and harvested whales. Some of their vessels were wrecked and their survivors arrived as ‘strangers on the shore’, interacting in a variet...

In 1861 the engineering maritime marvel ss Great Britain was chosen to take the first ever English cricket team to Australia. The tour was the brainchild of Melbourne-based businessmen, the caterers and wine merchants Felix William Spiers and Christopher Pond who had failed to persuade Charles Dickens to conduct a lecture tour of Australia. With cricket’s popularity growing in Australia they invit...

The pearling industry was one of northern Australia’s major industries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The historic vessel Penguin was built in 1907 for for a pearling company based on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait. She is one of the few surviving pearling luggers to retain much of its original construction and layout, and the only Queensland-built lugger in a...

Our mini-series on Maritime Asutralia continues with an episode dedicated to Brisbane's fabulous dry dock. The dock now sits in the grounds of the Queensland Maritime Museum on a bend on the south side of the Brisbane River and contains the magnificent historical vessel HMAS  Diamantina , a river class frigate built in the 1940s, and the Carpentaria , a lightship built in 1917 which provided...

Our mini-series on the maritime history of Australia continues with a tour of the Queensland Maritime Museum in Brisbane. Dr Sam Willis explores the museum with volunteers and local historical experts Kasper Kuiper and Keith Boulton. We explore the museum's extraordinary collection of ship models including the Orion (1934) , Otranto (1925 ), Orcades (1947) all of the Orient Steam Navigation Compan...

The pursuit of Germany's most famous battleship is one of the most dramatic stories of the Second World War and one of the best tit-for-tat / an eye for an eye stories in history. It began with Bismarck sinking HMS Hood, pride of the Royal Navy, in May 1941 and ended three days later with Bismarck being hunted by sea and air by a huge British squadron until she was trapped and destroyed. To find o...

  The passing of the Queen in September has encouraged historians to shine a light on the era of her reign - the 70 years between 1952 and 2022 - an extraordinary period in which the world fundamentally changed several times over. One particularly revealing way to look at this period is through the experiences of the Royal Navy.   It’s quite a story. Throughout Elizabeth’s reign the Roya...