International Journal of Maritime History

Although unlimited maritime access was advantageous, medieval seaports and port cities were often incorporated into serving a capital city’s economy by providing merchants with a transport system. Consequently, these outports had a subaltern relationship with that city, as well as tenuous relations of competition and cooperation with neighbouring outports. This article focuses on the hierarchical relations underpinning the subaltern status of Hoeke, one of the smallest cities in the medieval County of Flanders and a minor hub in the portuary system in the Zwin. This city is used as a case study through which to explore the paradox of maritime access and development. The research indicates that arguments of geography are insufficient to explain the development of these portuary systems, utilizing new insights from recent historical research and other academic disciplines. I will demonstrate that Hoeke’s retreat from the waterfront put an end to the paradox of maritime access, resulting in the transformation of the hierarchy in its relations with the capital city.

In 2008, Pierre Gervais contended that social and economic developments in the Atlantic were to be ascribed to an overwhelming European intervention in West Africa and the Americas. This article questions Gervais’s assumption by stressing how Europeans, West Africans and Americans – individuals and states – mutually influenced urban hierarchies and distributive hubs across three different continents, while arguing that these interactions and interconnections should be seen within a context of entangled histories. This contribution re-examines the Dutch experience of slave trade and shipping to assess the extent to which slave trading and shipping activities influenced port hierarchies in Europe, determined the organization of port hubs in West Africa and helped develop port structures in the Americas. This assessment is anchored in the data provided by the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, the collections of the Dutch West India Company and the Middleburg Commercial Company, and the notarial archives of Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

This article uses the experiences of ship’s fireman Harold Shaw to expose the confused early twentieth-century legal framework used to restrict the mobility of undesirable merchant seamen. Labelled invariably as a ‘nuisance’, a ‘malingerer’, ‘mentally-deficient’ and ‘epileptic’, Shaw was classed as a prohibited immigrant in New Zealand. Bureaucratic records are used to tell of his life ‘in transit’. His wanderlust took him from Manchester, England, to Tasmania, the Antarctic, New Zealand and back again. Initially hailed as an Antarctic hero alongside his fellows on the Aurora, one-half of Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, he was unceremoniously expelled from New Zealand. Shaw managed to enter the country again in less glamorous, but no less dramatic circumstances. Local authorities struggled to reconcile the complex legislation designed to protect the health of arriving seamen, but more so that of the public, to deal with Shaw’s liminal status.

This article examines the role of submarines within the strategy of the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1917 until 1941. It argues that the common characterisation of Japan’s naval strategy as outdated and erroneous in light of the First World War undervalues the development of Japan’s submarine fleet, which was critical to the development of the navy throughout the interwar period. Indeed, few scholarly works actually deal with this significant component in the Japanese Navy, leaving a legacy that is often under-contextualised and misunderstood.

The secret supply of the German Navy during the Second World War has scarcely been studied until now. The goal of this article is to study one of the more active supply areas of the Etappendienst at the beginning of the war, the one known as Etappe Kanaren, as part of the Grossetappe Spanien-Portugal. In this research primary sources from German Naval War Command have been consulted. Among the main conclusions, it should be pointed out, on the one hand, the intense activity to support the Kriegsmarine during the first years of the war, despite the distance from mainland Spain and the British pressure, which finally stopped the supply operations. On the other hand, we have confirmed the active role of the Spanish government in relation to the Etappendienst: Spanish authorities allowed the supply operations, but pressure from the Allies forced the Spanish government to impede these activities.

The aim of this article is to explain the factors that underpinned the expansion of the Spanish shipbuilding industry during the Francoist regime, when it grew to rank fourth in the league of shipbuilding nations in the 1970s. After a brief description of the evolution of its output and markets, the article focuses on three aspects of shipbuilding: technology and costs; industrial structure and ship specialisation; and, above all, the strong government support that made this industry one of the symbols of the international success of the Franco’s new developmental policies.

Arthur Ransome’s 12-volume Swallows and Amazons series (1930–1947), is often seen as the pioneer of the school holiday adventure story. However, a striking feature of these stories is the incorporation of a very large number of survival skills that are described in considerable ‘this-is-how-you-do-it’ detail. Previously overlooked or seen merely as references to Baden Powell’s burgeoning Scout movement, these books are better understood in the context of Ransome being a very experienced foreign correspondent. As this paper suggests, moreover, within the school holiday format, he is drawing a blueprint for rural guerrilla warfare after a successful invasion. Since the men will be away fighting, women must take leadership roles within a society, which, while respecting class differences, works harmoniously across them and which has taught its young people the skills to survive in the countryside, while observing on and reporting back about the invaders.

The ancient port-town of Muziris was situated on the western coast of Kerala in present-day India. It was famed for its spice trade, notably the shipment of pepper and cinnamon, which were indigenous to the Malabar region. The significance of this port town in the ancient spice route is evident in literary sources, from Pliny (Natural History) and Strabo (Geographica) to the Sangam epic works of Chithalai Chathanar (Silapadikaram) and Illango Adigal (Manimekalei). The Muziris economy depended on the spice trade. The Sangam works describe the wars that were waged between Chera and the Pandyan kingdoms to win monopoly rights to the ancient spice routes. The Muziris-Vienna Papyrus, a second century AD parchment, speaks of the huge quantity of pepper that was traded from Muziris to Alexandria through Koptos and Berneike in a ship named Hermopollen. The parchment also describes the taxes that were imposed on these commodities, and the well-organised merchant guilds based at Muziris. This substantiates the claims of the Peutinger Tablet regarding Roman soldiers being stationed at Muziris to protect their commodities from pirates. Literary sources are therefore invaluable to an understanding of the trans-oceanic trade of Muziris, which not only conveyed goods, religion, architecture and culture to and from the port, but also underpinned the state and economy of this particular place.

Studies of interconnections between social, technological, economic and cultural forces belong to the trend of modernisation studies in the Russian Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. Modernisation implies the establishment and growth of institutions and infrastructures that are examined as a set of communication practices between different actors – the state, experts and various offices. This research is an historical study of interconnections between technologies and society. It is focused on the significance of materiality (namely natural oil resources) in these processes.

This paper provides an historical review of maritime mobile radio communications systems as a primary means of ensuring the safety and security of ships at sea. Safety at sea has always been a priority for seamen and shippers. Distress alerts at sea caused by the blind forces of Mother Nature or, more commonly, by human factors have occurred over many centuries, as seafarers often set sail with inadequate information about their course, navigation and weather conditions. Until the late nineteenth century, only audio and visual transfers of information from point to point were used. From then on, however, new methods, such as news and information via wire and then by radio communications systems, were introduced. So long as safety standards are met, it is also important to test innovations and technology transfer to develop devices that are more reliable than mobile radio communications.