The Mariner's Mirror Podcast

This is the second episode in our Lusitania Disaster Special in which we explore the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-Boat in May 1915, which ended in the death of over 1900 people. In this episode we hear three fascinating eyewitness accounts: The 18 year-old lookout Leslie Morton describes how he lost his brother when the torpedo struck, scrambled for his life and ended up trawling the mor...

This episode forms part of our mini series on the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 - that terrible event when the enormous Cunard passenger liner was sunk off the coast of Ireland by a German U-Boat killing 1193 people. To find out more Dr Sam Willis speaks with Anthony Richards from London's Imperial War Museum. Anthony is an expert on eyewitness testimony and on the sinking of the Lusitania. The...

The second of a new mini-series on ship models. Dr Sam Willis explores the extraordinary model of the SS Great Eastern held in the collections of the National Maritime Museum in London. The Great Eastern, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was one of the most remarkable ships ever built. She was the largest ship ever built – by an enormous margin. measuring 692 feet(211m) and 17,274 tons gross s...

We explore the astonishing intertwined tales of both Robinson Crusoe and Alexander Selkirk, two men marooned on a desert island, one in fiction, one in real life. Robinson Crusoe was a novel published in 1719 by Daniel Defoe – that supposedly came from the pen of Crusoe himself – and told the story of how he was marooned and spent 28 years on a deserted island in the Caribbean. The book was e...

Carpathia is the vessel that earned her historical fame by coming to the rescue of the stricken Titanic in April 1912. She is often glossed over in the history books but Carpathia herself was a remarkable ship with a fascinating history, and one that also ends in disaster with the vessel at the bottom of the Atlantic. Carpathia was a Cunard Line transatlantic passenger ship, launched in 1908. Her...

In April 1912, the Titanic - the largest vessel in the world, and the largest man-made moving object that had by then been created - struck an iceberg, split in half and sank in the middle of the Atlantic, taking with her around 1500 souls. Her early demise meant that one of her most important pieces of safety equipment - her anchors - were never used as intended. In this fascinating episode Dr Sa...

In the Arctic there is a sea route which passes from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It passes up the west coast of Greenland into baffin bay before taking a sharp left turn through a maze of islands that lie off the northern coast of Canada. Once through these islands the route passes to the north of Alaska and then through the narrow straits between Russia and Alaska into the Bering Sea and from th...

Those of you who have spent any time at sea will know how the unique conditions of being afloat can fundamentally change the way that you think and how you experience the world. It will come as no surprise that there have been occasions in history when humans have been pushed to their absolute limits and their minds have cracked; when a firm grasp on reality has catastrophically failed in a sudden...

The first of a new mini-series on ship models. Dr Sam Willis explores the extraordinary model of HMS Royal George held in the collections of the National Maritime Museum in London. The Royal George is widely considered to be one of the finest eighteenth-century ship models ever made. It was made for the King in the 1770s, as a means of encouraging George III to take an interest in the Royal Navy a...

The San Juan was a basque whaling ship that sank in Labrador in 1565, and was rediscovered in 1978. In the autumn of 1565 several Basque whaling ships were anchored in a remote bay of Labrador, opposite the island of Newfoundland. It was the end of the whaling season, and hundreds of sailors were hurrying up to complete their ships’ cargo of oil barrels. Some were flensing the blubber off the...

The battle of the Egadi Islands - or the Aegates - is one of the most significant naval battles of the ancient world. On 10 March 241 BC the mighty naval powers of Rome and Carthage met off the coast of Sicily. The Carthaginian fleet was ambushed by the Romans in a well-planned and brilliantly executed trap leading to a decisive Roman victory. This was the battle that ended the mighty First Punic...

One of the most fascinating periods in all of maritime history is the Viking Age. From around 700 CE and for the next 700 years, Vikings spread out from Scandinavia, reshaped Europe and influenced lands far beyond. It's a story of ingenious maritime engineering, astonishing navigation, fierce battles, culture clashes, trade, language and the rise and fall of a complex society. To find out more Dr...

In this episode Dr Sam Willis and the multi winning historian William Dalrymple discuss the extraordinary story of the East India Company's dominance of India. It is still too easily assumed that the British conquered India through imperial conquest but the reality is even more shocking and relevant to the present day - because India was subdued not by a government, but by a private enterprise wit...

In one of the most remarkable maritime history stories of recent years, a team of scientists and explorers are getting closer than ever before to finding the Endurance, the ship that Ernest Shackleton took on his 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition. An expedition is currently in the Weddell Sea, less than two miles from the last known position of the Endurance and have released an underwater...

The naval battle of Guadalcanal was one of the most intense and dramatic naval battles of the war, and with with far-reaching strategic consequences. It is the winter of 1942, a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour which brought America into the war. Guadalcanal is the largest of the Solomons Islands, found to the north west of Australia.   In the months after the attack on Pearl H...

This week we are exploring the history of how to become a naval officer, with particular focus on the American experience and the foundation of the Naval War College in Rhode Island. Established in 1884 the U.S. Naval War College offered professional study for naval officers and now offers advanced courses of professional study for all services, U.S. government agencies and departments, and intern...

Dr Sam Willis speaks with Don Lynch, a historian who has spoken to more survivors of the Titanic than anyone else alive and was the official historian for James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic. Sam and Don discuss a number of issues including the concept of ‘women and children first’ and how that actually worked in practice. They also discuss unresolved historical issues relating to the history of the...

Dr Sam Willis explores the fascinating history of the UK’s historic fleet – the historic vessels that survive in the UK. Many are afloat but there are also ships on slipways, in sheds, hidden in creeks, dismantled in boxes, forgotten on canals... To find out more Sam speaks with Hannah Cunliffe, Director of National Historic Ships UK. a government funded, independent organisation which gives objec...

We explore the extraordinary story of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on 7 December 1941. To find out more Dr Sam Willis speaks with Mark Stille, a retired commander in the US Navy, who studied at the Naval War College and has recently finished a 40-year career working in the intelligence community, with tours on the faculty at the Naval War College, the Joint Staff and US naval ships; h...

In this episode we hear about Thermopylae , one of the most magnificent clipper-ships ever built, and some claim the finest of them all. In 1879, before her second wool voyage from Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald eulogised: ' The fastest and handsomest ship in the world is now lying at the Circular Quay loading for London, and those who take pleasure in seeing a rare specimen of naval archite...

In this, episode 12 of our 'Iconic Ships' series we discover the story behind one of the most remarkable pieces of footage to come out of the Second World War: the battleship HMS Barham capsizing and exploding having been torpedoed by a U-Boat on 25 November 1941. HMS Barham was a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship, She enjoyed a lengthy career, serving in both the First World War and Second World W...

In this our final episode dedicated to the maritime history of Wales, Eirwen Abberley Watton finds out about a project which has been documenting and reconstructing First World War stories from the Welsh coast. The project focuses not only on unearthing and recording shipwrecks such as the U-Boats from the war, but also on the the lives of communities and families affected by the war. To find...

In this our fourth episode dedicated to the maritime history of Wales, Eirwen Abberley Watton finds out about the work of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Wales who research and record Wales’ history from the tip of Snowdon to the depths of the Welsh coastline. Today we discuss their collaboration with the Lloyds Register Foundation in their hunt for Welsh shipwrecks....

In this our third episode on the maritime history of Wales we find out about the mysterious 'Bronze Bell' wreck, an early eighteenth-century wreck c.1700, discovered off the coast of Tal-y-Bont, Cerdigion, in 1978. The wreck is very distinctive due to the 65 tonnes of Carrera marble and heavy armaments found on board, as well as the bronze bell for which it was named. The wreck has...

In this, our second episode on the maritime history of Wales, Eirwen Abberley Watton speaks with Dr Toby Jones about a medieval ship that was discovered in the city of Newport in 2002, unearthed by chance during the construction of the Riverfront Arts Centre. The find provoked a huge response from the archaeological and local community who campaigned for funding so that it could be fully excavated...