The Mariner's Mirror Podcast

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, often directltly from plans, reports and...

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, often directltly from plans, reports and...

This is the second episode dedicated to that maritime masterpiece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The first episode is a fabulous new reading of the poem with a specially-commissioned composition and soundscape designed to enthral the listener with the poem's weird, ethereal, supernatural glory. This episode explores the text by crossing the boundaries between history...

This is the first of two episodes dedicated to that magical piece of prose so beloved by all with an interest in the sea – Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, first published in 1798. Many know of it, some have read it but few people have actually heard it in full, and listening to this masterpiece is the best way of appreciating its full maritime and supernatural glory. Thi...

Scholars debate the period when pirates actually ruled the waves - and the answer certainly depends on the location in question - but by general consensus it was all over by 1730 and it had begun some 80 years earlier, around 1650. The Golden Age of Piracy had been born in this crucial period when European maritime powers were flexing their muscles and starting to project naval power beyond the ho...

Our mini-series on Maritime Disasters continues with the Vasa , the mighty flagship of the Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus. Built between 1626 and 1628 Vasa was the pinnacle of Swedish artistic and scientific achievement. She was the most sophisticated warship ever built in Sweden, built at a time when Swedish seapower was on the rise. By the mid 1620s Sweden had become a major player in the naval...

Our Maritime Disasters mini series continues with the shocking, and scarcely believable tale, of HMS Guardian . In 1789 this 44-gun 2-decked ship of the Royal Navy was sent to the British colony in Australia under the guidance of the brilliant Captain Edward Riou. She was chock-full of convicts, livestock and provisions for the colony when she left England, and then re-stocked with provisions when...

Our maritime disasters series continues with the anniversary of the first successful underwater trials in 1863 of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley .   Shortly after the Hunley’s first trials in late July 1863 she sank during another test run, killing five of her eight crew. She was raised but then sank again in October killing all eight of her crew including Horace Hunley, the vessel’s...

We continue our mini series on maritime disasters with the third part of our episode on the wreck of the magnificent Italian passenger liner the Andrea Doria . Launched in 1953 as a means to rebuild Italy's reputation and status on the world stage after the Second World War she enjoyed a splendid career for just three years before she sank in 1956 after a horrific collision off the coast of Massac...

This episode continues our mini series on maritime disasters and our investigation into the wreck, in the summer of 1956, of the Italian passenger liner, Andrea Doria. This episode includes eyewitness accounts from Linda Hardberger and Mike Stoller. Linda is now 80 and lives in San Antonio Texas – she has been a teacher, librarian, museum curator and is a mother and in spite of her terrible experi...

We continue our mini series on maritime disasters with the extraordinary tale of the Andrea Doria , a magnificent Italian passenger liner lost off the coast of Massachusetts in 1956 when she was rammed by another liner. The Andrea Doria was built in the 1950s, born from Italy’s bruised pride after the Second World War, and seen as a way to put Italy back on the map as a major player in the world o...

We continue our mini-series on Iconic Ships by looking at the magnificent Sutton Hoo ship - placed inside the burial mound of an Anglo-Saxon king in the seventh century in what proved to be the richest intact medieval grave ever discovered. The riches of the tomb are now on display in the British Museum and a fantastic new project is underway to recreate the vessel itself which did not survive the...

In this episode we head much further back in time than we have ever dared before for an Iconic Ship…to find out about Henry V’s ship Grace Dieu , launched in 1418. And what a ship she was... Henry only reigned for ten years but in those years he worked harder than any of his predecessors to build a navy designed to destroy French seapower. His ships were not just barges designed for transport...

Our 'Iconic Ships' series continues with the magnificent SS United States , published on the 70th anniversary of her maiden voyage. Launched in June 1951 she was the last remaining American superliner from the golden age of transatlantic travel and was built specifically to break the transatlantic speed record. On her maiden voyage she made the transatlantic run in just three and a half days. To t...

The first of a new mini-series on maritime innovations, we look at the history of the propeller. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Joanna Mathers, Head of Collections at the SS Great Britain Trust in Bristol. This episode was inspired by the discovery of an unusual design for a propeller in the collections of the Lloyds Register Foundation: the 'De Bay Propellor' invented in...

Part two of our special episode looking at the remarkable life of Hannah Davison, wife of Captain Davison of the steel barque Alice A. Leigh/Rewa and mother to six children. The Davison family were something of a maritime Von Trapp family, and wherever they arrived in port they appeared in the local newspapers. Hannah carefully kept any newspaper cuttings that mentioned her family and her exploits...

Join us for the fantastic story of Hannah Davison who gave birth to six children on board the barque Alice A. Leigh (renamed Rewa in 1921), a steel barque which sailed the world between 1889-1930. The largest vessel ever built at Whitehaven in Cumbria, this four masted barque plied the world's sailing routes with a variety of cargo before joining a New Zealand wool merchant's fleet in 1921. Her st...

What did people wear in naval battles and why? The adoption, style and development of naval uniform is a hugely significant subject - one which helps us understand not only the development of the navy as a fighting body but also the forging of national identities, gendered identities and notions of social hierarchy. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Dr Amy Miller, Curator of Decorative Art...

On 29 May 1914, the magnificent passenger liner Empress of Ireland sank in the St Lawrence River with the loss of over a thousand people. A full two years after the Titanic disaster, this was a vessel with adequate lifeboats and watertight compartments, and yet she foundered in just fourteen minutes after a collision with a Norwegian collier - ss Storstad - which punched an enormous hole into her...

Our Great Sea Fights series continues on the 350th anniversary of the Battle of Solebay, fought between the Dutch and the allied English and French off the eat coast of England, and one of the hardest-fought battles of the Age of Sail. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Dr David Davies , historian and author of the Journals of Matthew Quinton, a series of historical novels set in the sevent...

On 24 May 1945 the Supreme Commander of the German Navy, Admiral Karl Dönitz recorded the following words in his War Diary: ‘Wolf Pack operations against convoys in the North Atlantic, the main theatre of operations and at the same time the theatre in which air cover was strongest, were no longer possible. They could only be resumed if we succeeded in radically increasing the fighting power of the...

In this episode we continue looking at folklore, myths and legends relating to the sea by investigating the story of the Feejee Mermaid, an extraordinary tale of a 'real' mermaid that was discovered in Japan in 1822, purchased by a collector and displayed in London to the grotesque fascination of thousands of people. Dr Sam Willis speaks with Béatrice Laurent, Professor of Victorian Studies at the...

Folklore, myths and legends relating to the sea have existed for as long as humans have been travelling by sea. The alien nature of the marine environment, the almost inconceivable scale of the oceans, the power of the sea, and the extraordinary richness in the ocean’s biodiversity has led to the creation and development of the most fabulous legends. And one of the most important of those legends...

Part 4 of our special min-series on the Lusitania disaster. Dr Sam Willis meets Lusitania historian Peter Kelly and together they explore some of their favourite items in the Lusitania exhibition at the Merseyside Maritime Museum. They discuss two different ships linked with the Lusitania story - the Falaba , a passenger ship of Liverpool's Elder Dempster line sunk by a German U-Boat off the south...

Part 3 of our mini-series on the Lusitania tragedy when, in May 1915 the Cunard passenger liner Lusitania was torpedoed 16 miles off the coast of Ireland, leading the deaths of over 1100 men, women and children. This episode looks at the general history of the ship, the reasons behind her construction, and the reasons behind her destruction. The episode puts the Lusitania sinking in the context of...