The Mariner's Mirror Podcast

This episode explores the wonderful Essex coastline – for those of you not familiar with the geography of England, this is the beautiful area a little to the north and east of London. We find out about boats built in Essex and the history of the boatbuilding infrastructure that created them, and in particular about 130 surviving vessels all built in Essex before 1965 that have somehow survive...

The historic ship Edwin Fox has a remarkable history. Built in Calcutta in 1853, she is the only surviving ship that transported convicts to Australia; one of the world's oldest surviving merchant ships; she served as a troop ship in the Crimean War; carried indentured servants to the Caribbean from China and immigrants to New Zealand. She is now preserved in Picton, New Zealand. To find...

With frequent headlines in the news highlighting the plight of refugees suffering shipwreck in the Mediterranean, death at sea is an important contemporary issue. This episode explores the historical context of death sea. The age of sail was a period of expedition and conflict where seafarers were increasingly important to the fortunes of the nation. Their work at sea was complicated with many uni...

This episode looks at one of the greatest of all maritime mysteries – the extraordinary tale of the Mary Celeste . On 4 December 1872, in the middle of the Atlantic near the Azores, the brigantine  Dei Gratia  chanced upon another brigantine. She was under sail but entirely silent, and it soon becomes clear that she was entirely deserted. She was called  Mary Celeste . Ever since -...

We continue our mini-series on the maritime history of Africa with an exploration of the extraordinarily colourful history of Mozambique Island - a UNESCO World Heritage site complete with fortified city and historical links that take us back to the era of the Portuguese exploration of Africa in the fifteenth century. Vasco da Gama was the first European to arrive here in 1498 and returned in 1502...

The fourth episode on our mini-series on the maritime history of Australia takes us to Perth and the workshop of Gerry Westenberg. Gerry has been hand-crafting scale model ships for well over 50 years and has built more than 130 in that time. He started this lifelong job by trying to modify a 1/600 scale Airfix kit of HMS Ajax to be HMAS Perth... with mixed success. Over time he has improved...

This is the third episode in our mini series on the maritime history of Australia. In episode one we learned about the arrival of the Dutch in Australia; in episode twp we learned about the Dutch ship Duyfken, the first European ship to land men on the Australian mainland; and today we’re moving on in time to hear about William Dampier and his ship HMS Roebuck . Dampier is an extraordinary charact...

In this the second episode in our mini-series exploring the maritime history of Australia we hear all about the Duyfken - the small dutch ship which, in 1606, is credited as being the first vessel on board of which a European crew first sighted the Australian mainland. To find out more about this ship and this crucial moment in time in global history, and also about the replica of the Duyfken that...

This is the first episode of a new mini-series on the maritime history of Australia. We begin in the port of Fremantle, Western Australia, at the Western Australian Shipwrecks Museum to learn about the long and fascinating history of the Dutch in Australia. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Elly Spillekom, who worked as the coordinator of the Duyfken 1606 Replica Foundation, is a volunteer...

This is the second episode of a two-part mini-series on the history of maritime special forces. In this episode we explore the history of combat divers - an elite within an elite. Combat divers must pass selection twice – firstly into their chosen elite military unit before passing a specialist combat diving qualification. Units are extremely small; they use specialist kit and vehicles; their...

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 - the 'Special Boat Service'. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Saul David, a military historian given unprecedented access to the archives of the SBS for his book - SBS - Silent Warriors: The Aut...

The subject of navigation in the Middle Ages is fundamental to maritime history as it lays the foundation for the exploration, migration, global trade and international wars that followed. It is also a fascinating and multi-faceted topic; one which takes us out into the deep oceans where issues of wind, current, tide and depth are all influential, but also up into the sky where the sun, moon,...

The history of time and how it relates to the maritime world is one of the most significant chapters in global history. The question of time is nothing less than the question of civilisation; the question of us. Time itself has been harnessed, politicised and weaponised; clocks have been used to wield power, make money, govern and control; to exchange knowledge and even beliefs. For the maritime w...

Hitler's relationship with his navy is one of the most intriguing topics of the naval history of the Second World War. Hitler was the Commander-in-Chief of all German armed forces - including the  Kriegsmarine - and yet he was a man with no experience or understanding of seapower. The result was a strange and fractious relationship with his navy which was ill equipped, poorly manned and, more...

We continue our mini series on maritime disasters with HMS Gloucester a British warship lost in the spring of 1682 off the Norfolk coast. It’s quite a story: here is a ship with an impressive career that takes us from her end on that sandbar in Norfolk all the way to the British presence in the Caribbean during the Cromwellian Commonwealth – a key moment in global history. Her later career was int...

During the First and Second World Wars British fishing trawlers were turned into the Royal Naval Patrol Reserve to help clear the seas of mines and even take on the deadly U-Boats. They became known as 'Harry Tate’s Navy' - a nod towards the celebrity comedian known for his bungling of everyday tasks and slipshod approach to life. Taking this wry criticism on the chin the fishermen-turned naval pe...

This episode was recorded at the fabulous Dockyard Museum in Barrow-in-Furness during the filming of their magnificent collection of ship models for the Lloyds Register Foundation's project ' Maritime Innovation In Miniature '. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century Barrow experienced one of the fastest and most extraordinary transformations in history when it changed from a small farm to o...

Our series on Iconic Ships continues with one of the most battle-honoured ships of Nelson's Navy: HMS Agamemnon . Today we got back to those days of the wooden walls to hear about this 64-gun Third Rate that saw service in the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic War. She fought in many of the major naval battles of those conflicts and had a reputation as bei...

We continue our mini-series on maritime Africa with an episode on Songo Mnara and Kilwa, two significant maritime settlements on the Swahili Coast. In the previous episode we heard how the Swahili coast of east Africa is particularly rich in its maritime cultural heritage and trading past, where African and Arabic cultures have mixed for centuries across the Indian Ocean. In this episode we invest...

We continue our mini-series on maritime Africa with an episode on the Swahili coast – a fascinating part of east Africa particularly rich in its maritime cultural heritage and trading past. The Swahili coast is distinctive for its mixture of African and Arabic cultures and the way that the two have been bound together by maritime trade across the Indian Ocean. There is also clear Chinese influence...

In this episode Dr Sam Willis speaks with Professor Paul Kennedy about the fundamental change in the balance of naval power and the strategic landscape that occurred in the Second World War. By the end of the war, the Italian, German, Japanese and French navies had been all but eliminated; the era of the big-gunned surface vessel ended; and America had risen as an economic and military power large...

Freak Ships of the Nineteenth Century is the title of a pamphlet written in 1966 by J. Guthrie, then an employee of the maritime classification society Lloyds Register. It was written for private circulation amongst the staff. Guthrie realised that, as the premier classification society Lloyds Register were able to produce a very good technical description of vessels, often directly from plans, re...

On 7 December 1872 the Challenger expedition set sail from Sheerness. It’s purpose was conceived just two years earlier, in 1870, by Charles Wyville Thomson Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University. Thomson had managed to persuade the Royal Society of London to ask the British Government to furnish one of Her Majesty's ships for a prolonged voyage of exploration across the oceans of th...

Freak Ships of the Nineteenth Century is the title of a pamphlet written in 1966 by J. Guthrie, then an employee of the maritime classification society Lloyds Register. It was written for private circulation amongst the staff. Guthrie realised that, as the premier classification society Lloyds Register were able to produce a very good technical description of vessels, often directly from plans, re...

Our third episode dedicated to the maritime history of Africa. We find out about indigenous African whaling; European and American exploitation of African waters; the numerous uses to which whale products were put both in Africa and abroad; the written and the archaeological evidence available for the study of whaling in Africa. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoked with Dr. Lynn Harris who has wo...