Skip Fischer: An appreciation

Jaap Bruijn and Paul van Royen

It is said that Skip Fischer has been the most influential maritime historian of the past 40 years. Be that true, then in what way exactly existed this influence and what is still visible of his work? In a time when maritime history largely comprised the study of great men, sea battles, ship maneuvering and Mahan (in fact naval history), Skip was the driving force after the introduction of the international approach of maritime history, with an accent on the economic and social aspects, and the (innovative!) use of large computerized databases. The Atlantic Canada Shipping Project and the written results (starting in 1977 with the publication of the proceedings of the first conference of the project) are proof of this new approach. It was with a light touch of caution ‘the old order’ of maritime historians welcomed the young and enthusiastic American Canadian ‘master mariner’, but it was Skip who managed to embrace all various directions and approaches into one great goal: the enhancing of the study of maritime history in all its aspects; that is, integrated, international, comparative, contextual maritime history. In that sense Skip was the right man in the right place to bring together the ‘old’ and ‘new’ order in 1986 during the 9th International Congress of Economic History in Berne (Switzerland) where an international maritime network, the Maritime Economic History Group, was founded. The newsletter of this group (later to evolve into the International Journal of Maritime History in 1989) proved to be of eminent importance in bringing together maritime historians all over the world. Maritime history in itself indeed is international, and can only blossom by the exchange of ideas, knowledge, or in short, communication. Only the fact that this statement nowadays seems trivial indicates how innovative and influential Skip was at that time. It seems unthinkable to us now that maritime historians are not working in an international scope. Starting the IJMH, Skip (together with Helge Nordvik) pointed out that maritime history needed context. That is to say, maritime history cannot do without the international dimension, nor without the social and economic approach, not forgetting the other possible perspectives, and – as pointed out in in the introduction of the first issue of IJMH – maritime history is part of the larger discipline of history, which means a maritime historian in the first place needs to be a good historian. Or to put it into other words: maritime history needed quality to get it in the right place, at the centre of the profession. Without doubt Skip has succeeded in realizing the aims of this journal, which were by and large his personal aims. The International Journal of Maritime History still exists and still reflects the scholarly esprit and enthusiasm of Skip. So does Research in Maritime History. To paraphrase a Danish scholar who equated Skip with the internet, we would like to state that Skip was the Facebook of maritime history. Thank you for that Skip!

Peter N. Davies

My association with Skip, as he was universally known, lasted for over 40 years and had a great influence on my academic studies. Prior to our meeting, my interests were largely confined to aspects of British maritime history, but with his support were subsequently extended to a wider transnational perspective. Thus for me the decline of the UK shipping and shipbuilding industries was more than offset by growth elsewhere, especially in Japan. I last saw Skip in October 2017 when he visited Liverpool and stayed with us for a couple of nights. Apart from being a little short of breath he was apparently his usual cheerful self and planned to return in January as part of a trip that was to include giving a lecture in Belgium. Sadly, subsequent telephone calls showed a rapid increase in his breathing problems and in spite of every effort by his doctors he passed away very quickly. I am still attempting to recover from this unexpected shock and would wish to pay my personal tribute to him and his numerous achievements. While not anxious to give a history lesson I still feel it would be useful to provide the background to our long association and friendship.

My original contact with Skip came as a result of Memorial University’s acquisition of a huge collection of British crew agreements and official logbooks from the Public Record Office. These provided the basis of the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project, which began in 1976. This was the year that Skip joined the staff at Memorial and so was able to take an active part in a series of conferences held there from 1977. My attendance at the meetings and my subsequent appointment as an External Examiner for the project in 1979 enabled me to appreciate the work of a number of Canadian scholars, including that of Skip.

An invitation to the 11th Fuji Conference on the business history of shipping and shipbuilding in 1984 was then to further strengthen my links with Skip and put them on a permanent basis. The success of this meeting in Japan led to a suggestion by its organizer, Prof. Keichiro Nakagawa, that similar international arrangements would be advantageous to the discipline. As the next suitable opportunity appeared to be at the International Economic History Conference, which was to be held in Berne, Switzerland, in August 1986, it was decided to request that a session be allocated there to maritime affairs. Unfortunately those in charge of these arrangements were not keen as they felt there would not be sufficient demand. This situation was further complicated by the illness of Nakagawa, who could not attend any meetings, so I sought the help of Prof. Peter Mathias and he managed to convince the relevant committee. Happily for my relationship with Mathias over 100 academics attended the session – it was the largest – so all was well. At this meeting, it was decided to set up a permanent body to represent its international interest and elected a steering committee for this purpose. As both Skip and I were invited to serve on this body it provided yet another opportunity for us to work together. This was still further enhanced when he and his Norwegian colleague, Helge Nordvik, offered to produce a newsletter for the new organization. From my vast knowledge as a temporary assistant editor of Business History I tried to dissuade them by asking if they realised how big a commitment this would be? Fortunately, they ignored my doubts and their legacy is the current International Journal of Maritime History.

As a result of these developments my contacts with Skip became even stronger and may be said to have culminated in 1992 when we jointly organized the 1st International Congress of Maritime History in Liverpool. Thereafter, Skip was to play an ever increasing role in the association and as Editor in Chief of the journal for over 25 years. While many others were then to take responsibility for much of the association’s activities, I also continued to take a modest part, so my collaboration with him was maintained for many years. Thus his many visits to the UK usually included a trip to Liverpool, where it became possible to make him an Honorary Fellow of the University. A further consequence of Skip’s scholarship came in 2005. This was designated as the ‘Year of the Sea’ and Liverpool University asked its Department of Economic History to recommend a particularly distinguished maritime academic for an Honorary Degree – Skip was our unanimous choice!

Although I enjoyed this long and close relationship with Skip I do not wish to claim that it was unique. Aided by his exceptional linguistic and computer skills he became a truly international figure and many of his foreign colleagues became deep personal friends. This process was greatly assisted by his generosity in providing help where he felt it was deserved – no-one to my knowledge wrote as many letters of support and references as he did.

Of course, Skip was not just an outstanding academic. He was a most urbane character with a considerable appreciation of modern music – at one time he presented his own radio show on this subject – and had a passionate interest in politics, which he never inflicted on his friends! Needless to say Skip found Newfoundland somewhat restrictive for many of his aspirations, so in spite of his comfortable family background in St. John’s and the wide range of regular visitors, he always aimed to spend at least part of each year abroad. Arranging this was never a problem, for his reputation as an academic brought him a constant stream of invitations so he was able to study, research, and lecture at a wide range of prestigious institutions on an annual basis.

Any assessment of Skip’s life and career would confirm that they were highly successful. It is also certain that with his workaholic attitude he would have achieved a great deal more had he been given more than the one year of retirement he actually enjoyed. Thus maritime history has lost one of its brightest and most influential individuals. From a personal point of view we have not just been deprived of a very distinguished academic, but also a dear friend who will be sadly missed.

Erik Goebel

In addition to Skip Fischer’s obvious scholarly capabilities and organizational skills, I would like to highlight his personal qualities. He was, for instance, so kind as to always immediately remember a younger colleague’s name and fields of research whenever you met him, and not least he saw to it that you were introduced to relevant scholars from his vast network and to prominent participants at maritime conferences. Thus, it has been a pleasure to participate in numerous conferences, symposia, etc., around the world where Skip was always present. These meetings have been encouraging and of great importance to a maritime historian from a small country like Denmark, where the national maritime milieu used to be very small. We will miss Skip, with all his enthusiasm and inspiration, very much indeed as a key person where maritime historians meet in the years to come.

John Hattendorf

Many of us warmly remember Skip Fischer for his pioneering, passionate, and energetic work in bringing scholarly attention to maritime history. While he devoted himself initially to only one branch of our extensive field, maritime social and economic history, he eventually came to embrace the broader scope of the subject and encouraged many others to follow. His own growth in thinking came from his determination that maritime historians typically failed to see the broader context of their subject. His desire for both an international scope as well as a more general conceptual basis that crossed standard academic disciplinary lines was a critical thought that allowed him to reach out to other scholars in corresponding fields. Even within his initial interests, the vast scope of work that needed research and analysis in maritime history led him to the conclusion that building teamwork among historians was a necessary skill and a fundamental basis for guiding centres of excellence to nurtured team approaches. While most academic historians found such thoughts as foreign, they come as second nature to sailors who rely on one another as the teamwork of a ship’s company at sea, as they should to those who study humanity’s relationships with the sea. Most importantly of all, we remember Skip as a champion for high academic standards in the field of maritime history, the need to widen perceptions and to develop multiple linguistic and research skills, the innovative application and testing of abstract patterns to maritime history, and the application of collaborative research in maritime history. All are ideas that Skip Fischer promoted and are ideas that motivate us all in moving forward the field of maritime history.

Ingo Heidbrink

The first discussion I had with Skip was in 2000, when he was cramped in the back seat of my car for a full-day car trip from the IMEHA Congress in Esbjerg to the International Congress of Historical Sciences in Oslo. I was a young and green historian working with the German Maritime Museum and had no idea who this guy was, beyond the fact that Lars Scholl had introduced him to me simply as a Canadian colleague. While I don’t remember too many details of the trip I do remember that Skip was honestly curious about my research into the history of oil transportation on the European inland waterways, although the topic was far away from any of his own research interests. More importantly, he used the Oslo congress to introduce me to each and every maritime historian in attendance, and while this was, to a certain degree, overwhelming, I came back from the congress well integrated into the field. Looking back on the Oslo congress I can only state that it was my induction into the close-knit international maritime history community and Skip did the nomination and the lobbying required.

Five years on, and after a three-month research trip to St. John’s, as well as a successful Habilitation later, I realized again at the next International Congress of Historical Sciences in Sydney Skip’s mastery in networking, although now I was being ‘voluntold’ by him into the position of Secretary General of the International Commission for Maritime History. In other words, while Oslo helped to start my career as a maritime historian, Sydney was asking me to a certain degree to pay back for this help, but not paying back to Skip, but to the discipline. Another ten years later, now at the International Congress of Historical Sciences in Jinan, and me being a Full Professor too, Skip agreed to join a roundtable on the state of maritime history as a discipline and to provide a critical response to my still somewhat naïve attempt to summarize the state of the field of maritime history.

In short, if there were any colleagues whom I had the honour to name a mentor not only for an academic degree, but for a whole academic career, Skip was definitely among them. And if asked if there was any particular way in which Skip has shaped my career as a maritime historian, and my particular niche in our research field, the only possible answer is either too long and too detailed, or as simple as being always open minded and curious, and treating young colleagues as equals and providing them with full access to the network of maritime historians. We might be able to cooperate because our topics call for collaboration, but really successful cooperation will always be based on people with the right chemistry working together, and if these people meet there will always be a new and relevant perspective on maritime history resulting from such cooperation, even if in the beginning the topics might have seemed to be far away from each other. Thanks, Skip!

Mark Hunter

I first met Skip when looking for a senior thesis supervisor for my undergraduate program at Memorial University; he then took me on as my master’s supervisor. Skip shaped my outlook on both maritime and naval history by showing me how the two fields were related, could be further developed, and linked to bring naval history beyond stories of traditional battles, tactics, and great commanders to look at history from below and how it shaped the world of seafarers, their educational opportunities, and employment. Skip taught me the way that economic and business historians approach issues and how their concepts could be applied to historical questions to place people and events in their socioeconomic context. Skip’s knowledge of how statistics, sampling, and databases can be used to inform historical analysis were pivotal in my growth and development as an historian. These techniques gave me an appreciation for how economic and social trends shape the choices that people make in a maritime world. His never-ending guidance was critical in forming my approach to A Society of Gentlemen: Midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy, 1845-1861 (Annapolis, MD, USA, 2010). Moreover, he introduced me to the professional world of maritime and naval historians in the UK who also guided my development as an historian and my other major studies: Policing the Seas: Anglo-American Relations and the Equatorial Atlantic, 1819 to 1865 (Liverpool, 2008) and To Employ and Uplift Them: The Newfoundland Naval Reserve, 1899-1926 (St. John’s, NL, Canada, 2009). Today, when tackling issues and analysis in higher education as a civil servant, I often hear Skip’s voice in my head when I’m thinking about how to approach a topic and how to give advice to decision makers. The world is the better for Skip’s life in it and the academy is smaller with his passing.

Olaf Janzen

I never had the privilege of others to be part of Skip’s ‘inner circle’ of close friends. I knew him since I first arrived in Corner Brook, a green-as-grass graduate student hired to fill a vacancy that had opened suddenly at the Sir Wilfred Grenfell College campus of Memorial University. Skip was my predecessor; the death of David Alexander caused him to be transferred at short notice to the St. John’s campus and I was hired in his place. Little did I realize how impossible a task it would be to replace him. Skip was, in my humble opinion, one of the most intelligent people with whom I have ever had the good fortune to be acquainted – a man of remarkable knowledge with the energy, drive, and dedication to apply that intelligence, not so much for his own benefit but for his passion for maritime history. He was, in my experience, a man without arrogance; he was sharing and caring, able to make whoever was in his company feel that he or she was the sole object of his rapt attention. He gradually took me under his wing, providing definition to my chosen career of historian, nudging me steadily – relentlessly! – into maritime history. Thanks to him, I became a reviews editor, first for the Canadian maritime historical journal The Northern Mariner / Le Marin du nord, and later for the International Journal of Maritime History. He drew me into historical associations, as part of their organizational structures and their activities. In this way, I came to know the people who inhabit the world of maritime history, not just the scholars, but their partners and spouses. There was a genuine sense of community, even of family, in that world, one in which I always felt welcome, as were my wife Ellen and my children, for they accompanied me to many conferences. In this way, I was able to make my own modest contributions to the maritime historical field even as it allowed me to introduce my family to opportunities that only international travel can provide. All this would have been so much more different, so much less enriching, had Skip not opened the door to what would most certainly have been a less stimulating career.

Drew Keeling

I first met Skip Fischer 20 years ago, during an early phase of my research into mass migration as a business segment of large oceanic steamship companies. Simultaneously, but quite coincidentally, one of my doctoral advisors, then editor of the Journal of Economic History, asked me for suggestions of someone with experience and expertise in evaluating scholarship in shipping history. With little hesitation, I replied – to the best of my then limited knowledge – that Lewis R. Fischer of Newfoundland seemed to stand out prominently above all others. Five or ten years later, based on broader knowledge, I would have had the same answer but without any hesitation or ‘seemed’. Today, with Skip’s departure, it would be next to impossible to answer such a query with just one name, in that way.

Given Skip’s stature and ubiquity in maritime history, anyone venturing into the field was bound to encounter him soon enough, and in any of number of possible settings. Typical or not, my own first meeting with Skip was, however, certainly unforgettable. I had taken the occasion of a conference in eastern Canada to append a research visit to examine some of the British crew lists deposited at Memorial University. After making arrangements with the expeditious assistance of archivist Heather Wareham, I asked about stopping in to see Professor Fischer, and upon arrival was welcomed repeatedly into his library-like office. Skip took immediate interest in all aspects of my research project, and I was encouraged to bring up any question or ask for suggestions on any aspect, which he would then readily answer or at least offer referring pointers on. A day or two into my archival research, I was also invited to a splendid dinner at his house, along with another visiting maritime historian, where the discussion ranged even more widely, across topics in academia, local history, international politics, etc. By the time I left warmhearted St. John’s, Newfoundland I felt like I had been welcomed with opened arms, and not just into an academic field, but into a dynamic international intellectual family.

Interdisciplinary and cross-border history have become more prevalent – and one might say fashionable – over the past couple of decades. However, those of us working on subjects bridging maritime history and other sub-disciplines internationally, and inherently and unavoidably so (in my case, studying the historical business of international migration across oceans), not just as an added extra cachet, often face difficulties in finding appreciation for the special difficulties and potential of such research within ‘traditional’ academia. In my research career, Skip was the crowning counter-example par excellence.

Skip Fischer is, I am afraid, irreplaceable. We can but attempt to evoke and perhaps partially emulate his keen and wide intellectual curiosity, his visionary inspiration, and his boundless, energetic enthusiasm.

Alston Kennerley

My earliest connection with Skip Fischer was made when he added my name to the circulation list for the newsletter about maritime history and historians, which he had started. I suppose it tested the interest, and as such was a predecessor to the International Journal of Maritime History, which came out in 1989. Thereafter I could be sure of seeing him at the numerous international conferences I had started attending and with which he was often involved in organising. I felt he brought a structure to the arrangements, urged brevity on speakers and promoted discussion. I certainly learned from these contacts and benefitted from more than one invitation from him to attend as a speaker. By then I knew he could be quite sharp with those, not trained in historical method, who drew conclusions lacking any basis in primary sources.

But Skip could be generous with advice, and at a personal level, I was among those, visiting St. John’s to work the crew lists in the Maritime History Archive, whom he invited to stay and ferried between his home and Memorial University. Going out to lunch with him and his research students was a lesson in informal tutoring. And he had helped with the airport transfers.

His legacy stands for all to view. A quarter of a century of personal involvement in the production of two fat issues of IJMH a year, and the publication of 52 monographs, is quite a record. His editorship was very much hands-on, embracing writing style (not all his changes were to my taste), typography, layout, and so on, and made it certain he had examined every word. He oversaw a good number of my pieces for which I shall always be grateful. His compass was truly international, by no means restricted to the anglophone world, and in the real spirit of maritime history. Promoting maritime history, Skip was also a founder of The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord, and the promoter of the modern series of International Congresses of Maritime History, as well as winning footholds in the International Congress of Historical Sciences and the International Economic History conferences.

I am among those who owe a lot over a long period to Skip, and who rues his passing. I am certain that had he enjoyed a normal retirement he would have picked up on, and completed, many projects he had had to lay aside in meeting so many publishing deadlines.

Faye Kert

In the early spring of 1997, I had just finished writing my doctoral dissertation for the University of Leiden under the direction of distinguished historian, Professor Jaap Bruijn. On the eve of becoming one of the world’s oldest new PhDs, I was anxious to complete the degree requirements before settling into my dotage. Since the University of Leiden is the oldest university in the Netherlands, dating back to 1575, I was determined to maintain their standards. Among the various recommendations was that candidates have an actual book to defend, rather than the ‘potential’ book submitted by most doctoral students in Canada. This was the issue I was discussing with Skip at a meeting that year. We had been friends for years through our mutual participation in the Canadian Nautical Research Society and the International Maritime Economic History Association (IMEHA). Knowing that Skip knew everyone, I asked him how someone like me, a federal government employee not affiliated with any university, academic institution, or book publisher, could possibly get a dissertation published in a couple of months in order to have a book in front of a committee by that May.

Anyone else would have said ‘impossible’ or ‘good luck with that’, but not Skip. He immediately offered to publish it as a monograph in the IMEHA’s semi-annual Research in Maritime History series, commenting that since I had written the thesis, he wouldn’t even have to edit it. It was a huge leap of faith on his part, since he had not even read it, but as a friend and colleague he was willing to publish my dissertation unseen. I cannot imagine many editors taking that risk.

With relatively little input from me, Skip and his editorial staff quickly transformed Prize and Prejudice: Privateering and Naval Prize in Atlantic Canada in the War of 1812 into Research in Maritime History No. 11, complete with tables, illustrations, appendices, and hundreds of footnotes (it was a dissertation, after all). I shipped a dozen copies to Leiden, just in time for my defence.

Unlike most universities, the University of Leiden examines doctoral candidates publicly before a large committee and with family and friends invited. In addition to Jaap and Carl Swanson, my external advisor, my committee consisted of more than a half-dozen professors from the law, economics, and history faculties, all with a copy of my ‘book’ sitting in front of them. One hour later, I was proudly holding my DPhil, without fear of having to spend the rest of my life revising my dissertation to get it published. For this alone, I owe Skip my undying gratitude.

Skip Fischer’s trust, judgement, and kindness (not to mention his editorial skill), enabled me to produce a book for my doctorate and a published reference that continues to be used. On behalf of myself and privateers everywhere, thank you, Skip. I could not have done it without you.

Michael Miller

I came to maritime history late in my career. This meant learning a new historiography, but also finding my way into the circle of practicing maritime historians to grasp more completely the work being done in the field. Two people, arguably the shapers of maritime history at the time of my entry into it, and, sadly, both no longer with us, made this possible. One was Frank Broeze, whom I had the good fortune to meet only a year or so before his untimely death. The other was Skip Fischer, with whom I formed a personal and intellectual friendship up to his recent death. Skip and I overlapped only partially in our own research interests. His work on Norwegian shipbroking contributed to my reconstruction of intermediaries who managed global maritime flows, and his querying of a paper at a very early stage drove home my need to comprehend the outsized role of Norwegian shipping in modern times. There are three citations of work by Skip Fischer in the bibliography of my book on the European maritime world in the last century. These represent, however, only the edges of Skip’s contribution to the making of that book.

Europe and the Maritime World: A Twentieth-Century History, and the articles spun off from it, required several years of research in archival and library collections and many interviews too. But to comprehend the seaborne infrastructure that made possible modern societies and that undergird globalization across an entire century, I needed a comparable institutional infrastructure for the doing of maritime history, because I simply could not write such a book – could not really come close – on primary research alone. In a certain way this was a multi-authored book, because without the collective work of maritime historians across geographical and subject fields, I was operating at best in semi-obscurity. No one contributed more to the creation of that infrastructure, and thus to my own evolution as a maritime historian, than Skip Fischer. By infrastructure I am of course referring to the IMHA and its congresses, where (not infrequently through Skip) I met many of the people who have made maritime history the field it has become; to the International Journal of Maritime History, which Skip edited; and especially to the series he founded – Research in Maritime History. This series distinguished the IJMH from other journals and generated its own exceptional historiographical resource that I found endlessly valuable in the writing of my book. Others in this edition will be able to speak better than I can of the ramifications of Skip’s own research on the doing of maritime history. For me, Skip Fischer was a supporter who created an atmosphere in which I could thrive. He was my cicerone into the field. And he provided the indispensable foundation that made maritime history accessible and exciting to me.

Hugh Murphy

With the late Professor John Armstrong, I probably saw Skip on his frequent trips to London and Liverpool more than most over the last two decades. He bore his illness (fibrosis of the lung) stoically, even as it became progressively worse. He had planned to see me in London in February this year, more in hope than expectation as it proved.

Skip’s contribution to the development of maritime economic history was colossal. His longevity at the apex of our profession was unparalleled and will not be repeated. Throughout our long friendship and mutual appreciation, Skip did not change one bit: his commitment total and his loyalty to friends undiminished marked him out as a person of the deepest integrity.

In assessing his contribution to maritime history, one can state with certainty that Skip left the discipline in a far better state than he initially found it. As editors, we constantly corresponded with the overall aim of improving standards of submission to our respective journals, by double-checking sources and references and in improving the content of articles. Skip detested the sharp practice of multiple submission of the same article to journals, and we would liaise accordingly.

How to sum up a stellar career? Skip remained loyal to Memorial University when he could have easily worked elsewhere. As a lecturer and a scholar, he was in great demand throughout the world. His long editorial stint at the helm of the IJMH and RIMH obviously impacted on his personal research – the sheer amount of time he devoted to these journals ensured this. To this end the profession owes him a great debt; not only its senior members, but junior scholars who Skip encouraged to publish and helped in their careers.

I miss my sartorially-challenged friend and in the Scots-Irish tradition I raise a glass of dark rum in his memory.

Jari Ojala

How can a brief reflection convey all the appreciation appropriate to a scholar who contributed in such depth – even to the point of having created – the community of maritime historians?

My first contact with Professor Lewis R. Fischer dates back more than 20 years when I was an early stage doctoral student preparing my first journal article. I sent it to ‘Skip’ Fischer for consideration in the International Journal of Maritime History. I will never forget the comments I received from him: his help through the process not only led to the publication of my first international research article, but helped me to understand what maritime history is, and what might be my place within the field.

His research had already been highly influential and widely read among Finnish academics by the time I began my dissertation research in the mid-1990s. Some of his articles had even been published in Finnish and Swedish in the 1980s. In our graduate school, Professor Yrjö Kaukiainen assigned me the task of reading through and reviewing all six volumes of the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project – and the knowledge learned from that effort guided my own work for the next two decades, including the topics and methods I have used as a maritime historian. In those volumes, the articles by Skip Fischer influenced me the most: productivity growth in shipping became the key theme in my thesis; seamen’s desertions, which has haunted me year after year; entrepreneurship in shipping that I’ve been grappling to fully comprehend for a long time; and finally seamen’s wages, a topic so timely it has stayed with me and inspired my current research.

Since our early encounters in the mid-1990s, when Skip even came to our graduate school seminar in Finland to comment on my work, I was fortunate to meet him from time to time in workshops and at conferences. Skip never ceased to be supportive, was never too busy to comment on my incomplete texts, and I admired and was inspired by his thought provoking ideas and tremendous expertise in the field.

Skip laid the foundations for my career as a maritime historian and even today, I have a manuscript draft on my desk to which Skip gave crucial and challenging comments in 2016 at the Maritime History Congress in Perth.

For many decades Skip has piloted us, the community of maritime historians, through difficult seas with his supportive feedback and by challenging us to excel. His expert guidance will be missed. The task of keeping the fleet of maritime historians afloat, of navigating unknown waters to safe harbours, now falls to us, as the pilot has left the ship.

Ayodeji Olukoju

I first encountered ‘Skip’ Fischer by sheer providence. I had asked Professor John Armstrong, editor of the Journal of Transport History, which published my first paper on maritime history, to recommend other outlets for my (maritime) research. On 30 August 1991 he recommended, among others, the International Journal of Maritime History (IJMH), which he described as ‘quite recently founded but has a prestigious editorial board and could well become the leading journal of its kind.’ I duly submitted a manuscript, which was accepted for publication. However, following a delay in scheduling it for publication, I sought clarification from the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Lewis R. Fischer, who replied on 14 September 1992, apologizing for ‘all the delays, most of which I cannot explain.’ Having ‘reviewed all the correspondence,’ he conveyed the decision to publish the essay. In a four-page letter of 22 September, which accompanied the galleys and some queries, he supplied answers to my questions on alternative journal outlets, research collaboration, and postdoctoral fellowships. He concluded the letter by stating that: ‘I admire your work and would be pleased to have additional contact with you.’ He then added in his handwriting as an addendum: ‘We would be delighted to consider any more of your work at any time!’ On 13 November 1992, he wrote: ‘I really like your work, Ayodeji. I hope you will consider us for future publications – and I will … be only too happy to advise you on alternatives.’ The article in the December 1992 issue was my first of five major articles in the IJMH.

That was the beginning of decades of selfless mentoring by a man that I did not meet in person until the World Economic History Congress (WEHC) in Madrid in August 1998. By a strange coincidence, my university had asked him to be the foreign assessor of my publications for the professorship earlier in the year! ‘Skip’ encouraged me to submit essays to the IJMH, the Great Circle and the Northern Mariner, which published seven of my papers on Nigerian and Japanese ports and shipping between 1993 and 2006. He wrote references in support of my applications for postdoctoral fellowships and facilitated my associate membership of the Maritime Research Unit at Memorial University. In 2006, my Liverpool of West Africa was featured in the IJMH Roundtable. In 2008, ‘Skip’ was instrumental to my election as a member of the Executive Committee of the International Economic History Association at the IMEHA Congress in Greenwich, London.

I am greatly indebted to ‘Skip’ for his mentorship and friendship. At the WEHC in Stellenbosch in 2012, incidentally our last meeting, he told me that we were not just friends, but brothers! The dedication of my 2006 Inaugural Lecture (‘Ports, Hinterlands and Forelands’) to him was an inadequate acknowledgement of the tremendous impact that his selfless commitment to scholarship had on my career and well being. His passing leaves a void that cannot be filled.

Sarah Palmer

One of my earliest encounters with Skip Fischer was in Newfoundland at the inaugural conference of the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project in 1976. He was one of a funded group of scholars, led by Professor David Alexander, investigating the rise and decline of the eastern Canada shipping industry, predominantly using the newly deposited crew lists. This was a team enterprise, but one in which they worked as individuals; a model for maritime history research more generally, which Skip came to see as ideal. For a young scholar, the Memorial project was not only a training in teamwork, but perhaps in mutual scholarly respect, at least to judge from how Skip subsequently behaved as an academic.

Skip was not a natural team player. He always had more ideas than anyone else and rarely kept quiet about them. In any public forum Skip was invariably ‘the leader of the pack,’ yet behind the scenes he could be extraordinarily self-effacing, seemingly happy to allow others to take credit for what he alone had made possible. Skip was not someone who did not listen to what other people had to say. He saw historical scholarship as a mutually beneficial endeavour; the fruits of maritime history research were to be shared, not hoarded. He respected other viewpoints and was meticulous in thanking other people and highlighting their contribution, however slight.

An irony of this was that many of those whom Skip acknowledged so generously owed much of their international prominence to him. Academically he was first rate, but his great contribution to the development of maritime history was in enabling others to thrive and gain recognition. The International Journal of Maritime History and its sister series, Research in Maritime History, were Skip’s projects, as was Northern Mariner, but there was much more. Many of the events and publications these chronicled had been inspired or promoted by him.

Skip was an ‘academic entrepreneur.’ In my career I have come across a very few who deserved this title, but none like Skip or on the same international scale. Others might excel at getting something off the ground, but then lose interest. This was not Skip’s way; he stayed the course. He travelled, he talked, he learned what we were working on. Above all, he was an encourager, something I personally benefited from hugely, as I am sure did many others. His long-term legacy will be the scholarship he inspired and supported.

Phillip Reid

I was perhaps the last PhD student Skip helped supervise. The last time I saw him was at my defence, at Memorial, on a typically cold and snowy February weekday, last year. My connection to Skip – which he claimed matter-of-factly was responsible for my being in his office, the first time we met back in 2012 – was Carl Swanson, who had taught me at East Carolina back in the late 1990s. When I decided to pursue a doctorate in 2010, Carl’s area was where I wanted to work, and he agreed to write a letter for me.

One of the first pronouncements Skip made to me included the phrase ‘who begat whom?’, by way of encouraging me to discern historiographical threads by making myself aware of who mentored a certain historian, who had mentored the mentor, etc. Skip liked to talk about the actual people who wrote the histories we were reading. It will surprise none of you that he knew many if not most of them. If I showed up in his impossibly crammed office (in which the heat was always turned up too high) to discuss, say, a piece by Robin Craig or John Harland, he would tell me about his work over the years with Craig, or the time he spent hours in a pub in – Ireland, I believe it was – with John Harland. These, though, were not irrelevant anecdotes. For him, there was no separating the person from the work, and he made that clear in his recollections. The importance Skip attached to Ralph Davis’s The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, a 2012 re-print of which he co-edited, is well-known in the field. He talked to me about Davis’s background as a person and as a scholar, and what he learned from having to compile an index for the book. It wasn’t likely I was ever going to talk one-on-one with anyone else who could tell me that sort of thing about the book that has indeed proven the most important single secondary source for my own work.

Skip and I were doing a reading list on the technical history of the ship. That was not something he worked on, but if it was maritime history, Skip knew it. I found this dense, highly-nautico-technical book, published in the 1920s in a limited run by Yale, called The Fore-and-Aft Rig in America, by E. P. Morris. Skip had not seen that. So he borrowed it and read it, even though he really had little interest in it. What he did have an interest in was doing his best to help me. He said that nothing was more important than doing everything you could for the students you supervised – not until they defend, but for the rest of your life. Unfortunately for all of us, his life after my defence proved all too short, but what he taught, we will pass on to our own students … in the very spirit of ‘who begat whom.’

Ches Sanger

At the risk of this appearing to be more about me than Skip, I’d like to offer a little personal information that that may provide a somewhat different perspective on the many strengths that made Lewis R. Fischer not only an outstanding scholar, but also an exceptional teacher, colleague, mentor, and friend.

Many Newfoundland students in the years immediately following Confederation with Canada in 1949 were poorly prepared for post-secondary education. In response to this problem, Memorial University established a Junior Division to help ease the difficult transition to independent academic studies and the challenges of urban life in St. John’s. I was consequently hired by the Department of Geography in 1970, primarily because of my training and experience as a public school teacher and administrator. While my principal responsibilities over the next two decades were teaching, advising, tutoring, and reaching out to students in their home communities, I completed two ‘career requirement’ graduate degrees. Skip came to MUN six years later as a member of the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project, which evolved into the Maritime Research Unit. His early role in the Department of History, however, also brought Junior Division responsibilities. A gifted teacher, no one worked harder, nor was more dedicated, and he quickly earned the trust and respect of students, often developing lifelong friendships.

I was thus fortunate to witness first hand the many attributes that enabled Skip to make a lasting mark on Maritime History globally, while maintaining teaching as a central focus. Part of the university’s new initiative, for example, included the requirement that all faculty administer SIR questionnaires intended to provide input on aspects such as course planning, classroom effectiveness, and approachability. His ratings were consistently superior to comparable MUN and North American measures. They also show that Skip did not compromise the high standards he set for both himself and his students. Typical comments, for example, were ‘well prepared,’ ‘organized,’ ‘interesting,’ ‘friendly’ and ‘always available.’ Perhaps more telling, though, was the number of students holding these favourable opinions who also pointed out that he had high expectations, was ‘demanding,’ and ‘a hard marker, but fair.’ These characteristics, as I think most would agree, stood Skip in good stead as his life beyond Memorial became more complex and his national and international responsibilities and reputation grew.

On a more personal note, it was not until my retirement in 1996 that he became a valued counsellor and, so typical of Skip, the transition was seamless. I continued to have office and departmental support, which enabled me, now free of teaching, administrative, and other duties, to more seriously consider publishing. Unsure of how best to proceed, I turned to Skip for advice. Always generous to a fault, he agreed to look at some of my drafts and he quickly (another trait) encouraged me to proceed. His feedback, whether informal or as a journal editor, was often embarrassingly detailed, but always insightful. His help also revealed yet another strength – I can attest that over the past two decades he had become a true generalist in that his definition of what constituted ‘maritime history’ covered an increasingly wide range of topics and disciplines, including a geographer’s studies of past sealing and whaling industries.

I owe a great deal to Skip as a friend, colleague, and mentor, and I miss him greatly.

Lars U. Scholl

I met Skip for the first time at a session on maritime history during the Ninth International Congress organised by the International Commission of Economic History in Berne in August 1986. It was a start of a long friendship and professional cooperation. I became a member of the Maritime Economic History Group’s steering committee, which was established to facilitate the communication amongst maritime historians and to help build a viable scholarly sub-discipline.

In 1989, Frank Broeze, David Williams, myself, and others supported Skip and Helge Nordvik as founding editors of the International Journal of Maritime History. For 23 years I held various positions on the editorial board until I resigned in Ghent in the summer of 2012 after having been elected president of the International Economic Maritime History Association. In those years an innumerable number of emails were exchanged between Skip and me in addition to many telephone calls. With David Starkey’s help, we managed the transfer of the Journal from Memorial to Hull University in the years 2012 and 2013. It must have been hard for Skip to let go after 24 years at the helm. Although it must have been painful for him to accept that his baby had to go somewhere else he never complained about my many moves to find a solution for the successful future of the journal in view of his approaching retirement from his chair in St. John’s. Perhaps the fact that he wanted to continue together with Hugh Murphy as an editor of Research in Maritime History made it easier for him to accept that his editorship had come to an end. The prospect of having more time for his many projects, especially the cooperation with his Norwegian colleagues, may have been an amelioration for the loss of the journal.

One charming thing about Skip was that he never used my Christian name when he spoke to me. He always addressed me as Dr. Scholl, lengthening the name Scholl. Presumably he was subconsciously thinking of Dr. Scholl’s footwear and footcare, the American company which was founded by Dr. William Mathias Scholl in Chicago in 1906. Since my feet are alright and I don’t have any walking problems, I lived comfortably with my name.

I think deep in his heart Skip was most of all a DJ. Once we were sitting on our terrace having a light meal – Skip loved the green salads my wife Christine prepared, because green lettuce is rare in Newfoundland – I said to him ‘move a little closer,’ which he immediately interpreted as a reference to a hit song from some years back. From that moment, our conversations often revolved around the lyrics of the pop songs that he had played during his early career as a DJ.

Skip was always most helpful at various stages of my academic career. He was a motivator and encouraged me to go ahead, whenever support was needed. When I was about to get promoted to full professor at Hamburg University in 2000 the commission asked him for an external assessment of my academic qualifications. A few years later he served again as an external expert when I successfully applied for the first chair in maritime history in Germany at Bremen University, a position that was linked to the directorship of the German National Maritime Museum. The last time we spent several days together was at the IMEHA Congress in Perth. We lodged at the same hotel and met every morning for breakfast in one of the restaurants around Perth. It was at this conference that I suggested to the assembly, with Skip’s wholehearted support, to drop the letter E from the association’s name. Now IMEHA has become IMHA. Only seven months later, we met for the last time. It was at the funeral of our very good friend and esteemed colleague John Armstrong. Skip gave a very moving and personal tribute, Remembering John, in which he reminded us that his wife Pam was John’s most loyal supporter privately and academically, while David Williams outlined John’s academic achievements. David and John had collaborated in many publications. When we parted in London I had no idea that this would be the last time we were together. Less than a year later the most important maritime historian of his generation, who was only four months older than I am, was no longer amongst us. The loss is deeply felt.

Jo Stanley

Let’s hear it for Skip with all his dimensions. When I went into Skip Fischer’s vivid St John’s basement in 1995 I found a kaleidoscope of culture, including neatly arranged rock n’ roll cassettes and many novels. If I were to connect a key song with Skip it would be Fats Domino’s 1959 recording: ‘Well, I’m ready, I’m willing. And I’m able to rock and roll all night.’ Skip’s version would be: ‘Well, I’m ready, I’m willing. And I’m able to do mar hist all night – and all day too.’ And the rest.

The focus of this memoir of Skip is his contribution to women’s maritime historiography. No, you haven’t missed his seminal articles ‘Transvestite bosuns of Atlantic Canada, 1900-1938’, nor ‘Feminism’s impact on seafarers’ allotment practises.’ But he quietly supported the opening up of maritime historiography to awareness of gender’s role, and of women’s significant presences and absences. He did so by making the IJMH available to scholars of this subject, without sexist remark or hindrance.

Skip helped me – a writer doing an unfunded PhD, who was new to maritime scholarship, although not to gendered history – when he arranged for me to have Visiting Research Fellow facilities at his base, Memorial University of Newfoundland. His generosity meant I could thoroughly research employment patterns of stewardesses, in the Maritime Archives’ crew lists. Even though we had only met just briefly at a maritime history conference, Skip, Ann Devlin (his then wife) and her mother Marie, hosted me for two whole months.

He drove me to and from MUN (in his remarkably un-Harley Davidson-esque) car and introduced me to the Maritime Archives, the Atlantic Canada project, IJMH, and the International Commission for Maritime History. Organically, daily, and with conviction he educated me about two pivotal matters: the unquestionable importance of collegiality (I hadn’t even heard the word until then) and the solidly grounded international scope and intellectual integrity of members of the maritime historiography community. Only later did I realise the IJMH had been in existence for a mere six years by then. In other words, he inaugurated me into the sustaining and honourable network I still value today.

Even better, in an academic world where traditionalists were still excluding practitioners of women’s studies, to Skip it was axiomatic that in IJMH/IMEHA culture researchers would never be invalidated because their focus was on that two per cent of the maritime labour force: seafarers who wore frocks and sou’westers, or had babies while studying for their master’s certificates. The point is how you study these seafarers and how you disseminate your findings.

In the year I got to know Skip, 1995, the women’s liberation movement had been underway for a quarter of century. Scholars of gender-aware maritime history were increasing partly because the study of marginalised minorities generally, and of labour within mar hist, was growing. Skip had published the IJMH’s first four articles on women/gender in 1992 (by Margaret S. Creighton, Dianne Dugaw, Elliott J. Gorn, and Dian Murray). Those seminal works, Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic World, 1700-1920 and Female Tars, emerged in 1996 and 1998 respectively. It has always seemed to me that, under Skip, the IJMH kept up with this momentum. However, on counting today I found there were only eight articles on women or gender (not including reviews); a roundtable review of Joan Druett’s populist She-Captains in 2000; and a forum led by Paul D’Arcy on ‘Women and the Sea in the Pacific,’ in 2008. This disappointing quantitative summary does not reflect the actual climate of ‘women’s maritime history’ and Skip’s background support for the significant work emerging from Tapio Bergholm, Valerie Burton, Lorraine Coons, Margaret S. Creighton, Dianne Dugaw, Diane Frost, Merja-liisa Hinkkanen, Sari Maenpaa, and others, many of them working in an interdisciplinary way. I, too, am barely visible in the IJMH count, but I create books, articles, conference papers; maintain a blog on the gendered seas; do museum consultancy on representing minorities; and I founded the Women and The Sea Network at the UK’s National Maritime Museum. Would my work on multi-disciplinary gendered maritime history have emerged anyway, without Skip’s initial boost? Undoubtedly, but with less of a sense of being legitimated.

In his formal role as IJMH editor, and his corresponding informal role as networker, Skip shaped maritime historiography’s inclusivity and therefore its global relevance. He did so by being open and readily even-handed, rather than being evangelically equal-oppsy. Skip could, of course, have easily won an Olympic medal for belly-aching. But his impatience was never about the gender of a writer, or their focus on gender. It was the scholarship that mattered. Meticulous, and convivial too, Skip helped paved gendered mar hist’s way. And we rock on – in my case deeply appreciatively.

Stig Tenold

I first met Skip on 5 October 1993. He gave a seminar on the growth of the international economy in the 19th century at the Norwegian School of Economics, where I was a master’s student. I still have the notes I took at that lecture.

Skip was in Bergen a lot. He was one half of what I like to think of as the ‘Dynamic Duo,’ with Helge Nordvik, who was my PhD supervisor and my academic father, his dynamic partner. A couple of years before I met them, the two had established the International Journal of Maritime History, and by that action alone left a permanent, positive mark on the field of maritime history.

In addition to establishing the IJMH and creating a meeting place for maritime historians all over the world, Skip and Helge were a prolific research partnership. When Helge died suddenly and much too early in 1998, Skip was devastated. However, he put even more of his time and energy into the journal and also retained a close relationship with Norway. He became my ‘academic stepfather;’ Skip in effect took over from Helge. He supervised my PhD and helped me find my feet in the world of academia and in the world of maritime history. Skip became my link to an international network that has meant much more to me than the colleagues that I have at home.

Hearing Skip give a lecture or talk was always a pleasure. Informed, clear, analytical – without notes, but with conviction. A colleague once pointed out that watching Skip give a lecture or speech was a bit like watching a musician play – someone in their own world, often with eyes closed, aware that they were performing; stringent, and stream-of-consciousness-like at the same time.

In 2002, after Skip had spent another sabbatical in Norway, he gave me a copy of all his lecture notes, as he thought it might be useful for me. These notes revealed that Skip was like an improvising jazz musician – someone following a predetermined melody or theme, but with the ability to take a step away from the script here and there. His notes were well-structured and extremely detailed. These were the scores that he was ‘riffing on.’ He had put an enormous amount of time, work, effort, and thought into them. The fact that he gave them to me, matter-of-factly, says very much about Skip’s generosity. Beginning my own career as a lecturer, I could stand on the shoulders of a giant.

Skip’s support of other scholars – young and old – and his willingness to do things ‘for the common good’ was exemplary. He was the lynchpin of the international maritime history community. He contributed to making me who I am. For that I will always be immensely grateful.

Malcolm Tull

I first met Skip 32 years ago, at a meeting of distinguished maritime historians at the International Congress of Economic History in Berne, Switzerland. As is well known, this meeting led to the establishment of the Maritime Economic History Group, the forerunner of what is now the International Maritime History Association (IMHA). While Skip didn’t ‘recruit’ me to maritime history – it was Frank Broeze’s infectious enthusiasm that encouraged me to enter the field – I quickly realised he shared Frank’s drive and enthusiasm for maritime history and was one of the profession’s leading scholars. Skip was frequently absent from his base at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, travelling the globe teaching, researching, and generally promoting maritime history.

I visited him only once in Newfoundland, but have vivid memories of this trip one spring in the 1990s. The sight of icebergs floating down the coast and ‘Newfies’ walking around in shorts and t-shirts in what – to an Australian – was freezing weather was amazing enough. But meeting Skip in his office, which was basically a mini-library stacked high with books, left a deep impression of a dedicated scholar. I only hope that since his passing these books have gone to a special collection and not been scattered to the winds.

I worked most closely with Skip during my term (2000–2008) as a joint editor of the International Journal of Maritime History. I would frequently email him about papers that I was editing and usually got a prompt response, even though in Newfoundland it was very late at night. Skip’s workload was prodigious because from 1991 he was also producing the successful Research in Maritime History series. There is no doubt that with these publication series Skip successfully helped establish maritime history on the world stage as a reputable and scholarly discipline.

Skip, together with Peter Davies, organised the first International Congress of Maritime History in Liverpool in 1992. At this and every subsequent conference, Skip was a commanding influence, usually giving a magisterial overview of some aspect of the maritime past, recruiting papers for the IJMH, and giving advice and guidance to younger scholars. Although his health was not the best he still managed to make the long journey to attend the IMHA’s 2016 conference held at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. I regret that I was so busy with the organisation of the conference that I didn’t get to spend more time with him.

Skip’s contribution extends well beyond his individual scholarship to include establishing the institutional foundations for the development of the specialism of maritime history. With his passing, the profession has lost an outstanding scholar and leader.

Jesús M. Valdaliso

My first contact with Skip Fischer was purely academic when in the late 1980s, doing my PhD thesis on the economic history of Basque shipowners and merchant shipping in Spain, I discovered the books published by the Maritime History Group at Memorial University of Newfoundland. In a country such as Spain, where maritime history had been traditionally written by naval historians and antiquarians and had not deserved any attention from economic historians, those books were a sort of a ‘methodological lighthouse’ for me and strongly shaped and broadened my perspective and analysis of international merchant shipping in the 19th and 20th centuries.

For this reason, as soon as I read my thesis, in the spring of 1990, I decided to contact Skip for being accepted as a foreign scholar for a short stay at the MUN. Skip’s response was quick and a shock to me: he not only accepted me at MUN, but also offered me his own home to stay in while I was there. During my short, but very intense, stay in St John’s, in May–June 1990, I not only discovered and began to work on the big archival stuff of the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project, but even more importantly, Skip opened up to me the doors of the then very young community of maritime historians gathered around the Maritime Economic History Group (then IMEHA, today IMHA) and the IJMH, and became like an academic father, and something else, to me. I still remember us watching together the NBA play offs, when the Pistons defeated the Bulls and then the Blazers, but also talking about music and books, or better, learning from his vast amount of knowledge about both fields. After that, I was regularly in touch with Skip about the different events and venues organised by the IMEHA worldwide, and I always benefited from his encouragement and support.

Quantitative methods, theory-informed approaches, global perspective, and comparative history were four basic elements of Skip’s work that I have attempted to follow during my academic career. His articles in the Mariner’s Mirror (2011) and in the International Journal of Maritime History (2017) about the future of maritime history are powerful reminders of his views on our discipline that we should not forget.

Finally, I would also like to emphasise the outstanding role that Skip played in the scientific community of maritime historians around the world, a role that, as far as I know, cannot be equalled by any other colleague in this discipline, nor in others. Apart from being the dedicated editor in chief of the IJMH for 25 years, he was also the man behind the stage at almost every event and activity of our maritime community. A Danish colleague accurately described Skip as the Internet before Internet. Well, I might add that even after the Internet, Skip continued to be the hub of our global network.

David M. Williams

In the many tributes to Skip (both at the meetings in London and Crete) one observation made by all speakers has been that of Skip’s generosity of spirit and time. He gave, and he GAVE willingly. He gave to all and especially to young scholars. Skip had relatively few post-graduate students of his own, but he mentored dozens worldwide, embracing two generations. His advice, his provision of publishing and conference opportunities, and the writing of references for grants and positions, promoted countless careers. It is very easy to say in platitudinous fashion ‘well done Skip,’ just as it is easy to say ‘he edited the IJMH for 25 years,’ or that ‘he edited 50 volumes in the RIMH series’ – not to mention the Northern Mariner and countless newsletters. However, no-one can appreciate, and some do not even consider, the constant labour, effort, and totally unselfish devotion of Skip to his subject and other colleagues working in maritime history.

Encouraging young, aspiring, and promising scholars is commendable, but there is kudos to be gained from being able to remark: ‘he/she was once of my students; I helped them on their way.’ But what of those who didn’t gain a ‘kick start,’ who were not lucky or favoured, who worked in unfashionable institutions, who were burdened by administrative and teaching loads, but nevertheless painstakingly engaged in research? ‘Also-rans,’ or ‘never quite made it,’ with whom engagement embodies an element of charity. This was one of Skip’s special attributes. Wherever a person was on the scale, it was of no matter. If they had an interest in maritime history, Skip was there to encourage and provide an opportunity. Now, I count myself in the late 1970s as ‘on the shelf’ career-wise – mired mid-stream. Perhaps, I was on my own, but I suspect, very much, that there were many others.

And then came Skip. I met him first at conferences of the Atlantic Canada Shipping project. His enthusiasm was infectious and his energy enormous. So too was his friendship, freely given. Through Skip and through the many friends and contacts he gained, I was introduced to the new and growing international community of maritime history. Skip contributed both to the growth of that community and even more to its collegial character. Conferences (and there were many with the blossoming of maritime history) were always happy, inclusive gatherings with no point scoring, and invariably Skip facilitated the publication of papers. Skip’s commitment, and his genuine delight at the success of others, encouraged enormous loyalty and this became a group loyalty to a common cause. Skip was a friend and inspiration to all. I recall Frank Broeze describing an eminent historian as ‘someone who was always looking over your shoulder to find someone more important to speak to.’ If Skip looked over your shoulder, he was searching for those who appeared to be ‘left out.’ Skip enriched my life and career and he did the same for so many others worldwide.

A final comment

It might be just a crazy coincidence or it might be something different: while compiling this collection of memories I’m onboard MS Stubnitz, a former East German factory-freezer trawler that is used today as a maritime history monument and a floating cultural centre mainly devoted to experimental avant-garde music projects that will never make it to the large media networks (www.ms.stubnitz.com). Skip never had the chance to visit this ship, but he would have enjoyed it deeply as it not only combines maritime history with modern music, but more importantly provides a platform for (young) people to do what they really like, regardless of nearly all economic considerations, and to challenge traditional concepts of maritime history. Persistence that borders on stubbornness might be the key to the success of a project like MS Stubnitz and maybe this is also true for an academic career like Skip’s. But the terms ‘persistence’ and ‘stubbornness’ do not do justice to what it is about, and ‘devotion’ and ‘love of what you are doing’ might be better descriptors. Between the lines, these terms can be found in all contributions to this section and are key to Skip’s enormous support for younger generations of maritime historians.

A Norwegian colleague of my generation told me some time ago that we need to realize that our generation is today the generation of the big boys and girls. We might hate to realize that this is true as we might not be 100% certain if we are really ready for this. But one of the many things that Skip achieved during his career as a maritime historian was preparing this next generation to take over the helm and chart a steady course into unknown waters, sailing as one crew rather than single-handedly.