International Journal of Maritime History

From 1547 to his death in 1561, Luca Martini (1507–1561), a Florentine polymath and bureaucrat, was appointed superintendent of the Ufficio dei fossi in Pisa. Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici tasked him with the reorganisation of coastal Tuscany, which entailed reclaiming the Pisan plain, restoring and embellishing major and minor urban centres and reviving trade in the area. In his capacity as superintendent, however, he was also in charge of supervising Pisa’s shipyard, building a new military and commercial fleet and renovating the coastal defence system. This article will show how Martini’s unique concentration of power was instrumental in reorienting the Medici perception of the Tyrrhenian as a ‘last frontier’ to be exploited and defended.

From 1595 up until 1640, the slave trade to the Spanish Indies was under the asiento system, monopolized by Portuguese new-Christian traders. This paper analyses the naval logistics of this specific transatlantic slave trade from 1604 to 1624, based on documentation in the Archivo General de Índias in Seville. In accordance to the data available, it is possible to present tendencies about this specific slave trade, the typology of the ships involved, and the crews’ age and provenance. The new data presented in this paper is a complement to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, as it is based solely on evidence from the Archivo and has a different focus, specifically its naval logistics. Although it was a monopolized trade, it was only made possible by a multitude of participants.

A sampling of piracy and piracy-related trials involving mainly English (later British) and colonial courts between 1670 and 1731 shows that from opening statements through deliberations they were rapid affairs, few extending beyond a single calendar date, and that on average they appear to have convicted about six of every 10 defendants who pleaded Not Guilty. That conviction figure is impacted by high-volume trials in 1700 and 1722 that acquitted relatively large numbers of defendants; eliminating these two trials from the mix yields a significantly higher conviction rate (about seven in 10) for those who pleaded Not Guilty. This article presents its sampling data, noting appropriate cautions, in the context of the era’s legal proceedings and practices.

From the 1830s to the 1880s, non-stop voyages from the United Kingdom to the Australasian colonies created highly structured and insular shipboard communities. Emigrant experiences were shaped by the social spaces aboard sailing vessels, alongside layers of formal superintendence and informal communitas. While these increasingly literate travellers commonly recorded their passage in diaries and letters, other means of marking the journey are less well documented. Detailing the voyages to Sydney of sister clipper ships Samuel Plimsoll and Smyrna in 1874–83, this article explores two complementary maritime textual traditions. One practice saw newborns named after their vessel or – in a singular instance – detention in quarantine. Another enduring tradition entailed emigrants carving mementoes of their voyage into the sandstone at Sydney’s North Head Quarantine Station. In contrast with written narratives that often concluded upon arrival, we argue that these informal commemorations kept voyages and vessels alive through the ensuing decades.

This article examines the potential environmental impact in one specific theatre of World War II during a specific time frame. The study begins with an examination of the major oil spills that occurred after the 1960s to place them in a relationship with the cumulative effects of smaller spills, which best describe the numerous individual spills during 1942. It provides historical detail into the German offensive against North American shipping to establish a general scale of the resulting oil spills. Finally, it will describe the environmental impacts and assess current efforts to mitigate risks of continued oil exposure from shipwrecks in sensitive marine ecosystems. This establishes the theoretical framework to answer, at least in part, the question of whether a rapid succession of small spills would cause as much damage as large spills.

This article analyses multiple, intertwining and layered motivations for the Royal Canadian Navy’s 1948 northern voyages into Hudson Bay. Drawing upon scientific papers, it adds to the existing historical literature about this voyage, showing how some officials and scientists attempted to utilize the voyage for humanitarian, social, economic and other purposes beyond security and defence. It also critically examines how a westernized masculine faith in science and technology drove Cold War anxieties and developments, justifying military and naval invasions of the sparsely populated northern areas. The article, moreover, exposes how the bipolar dynamic influenced decision-making, taking attention away from a vital consideration of local peoples, their lifestyles and the conservation of natural resources.

This article examines the expansion of post-war Swedish ice-breaking and winter navigation from a small state perspective previously put forth in research on the corresponding historical developments in Finland. The results confirm the notion that the post-war expansion of winter navigation was related to the contemporary transformation within the forestry industries. Both State maritime actors and interest groups from the forestry industries framed ice-breaking as a decisive instrument to promote the exports of pulp and paper. This coincided with the introduction of cost-efficiency measures within transport policy, which allowed the State ice-breaker service to expand at the expense of the railways.

In 2012, the large Uljanik shipyard in Pula (Croatia) was finally privatized, as a result of pressure from the European Union. The new owners were the workers (and pensioners) of the shipyard. History seemed to have come full circle: thanks to ‘privatization’, a previously ‘socially owned’ Yugoslav enterprise returned once again into the hands of workers. Yet, a closer look reveals that much has changed both on the shop floor and in the business strategies of the firm. In this article, we discuss performances of transformation relating to the Uljanik shipyard over the period from 1970 to the present, drawing on archival research, observations made in Pula and interviews with Uljanik workers. The article reveals how workers, managers and state officials understood their roles on the stage of this enterprise, and how they interrelated. Various important paradoxes relating to the ‘transformation’ from Yugoslav self-management to self-managed capitalism are revealed in the process. These experiences help to explain the difficulties in restructuring shipbuilding in Croatia today.

This article examines the potential of foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing the port sector in Oman. Data was collected through an administered questionnaire with a sample of 110 respondents selected randomly from three ports: Sohar, Salalah and Sultan Qaboos. The study used SWOT analysis, Chi-square and t-test to establish that the strategic location of the country, social and political stability, easy access to skilled manpower from neighbouring countries and good infrastructure are the main factors that attract FDI to Oman’s port sector. The benefits of FDI to Omani ports include providing access to capital, bringing new organizational and managerial practices, creating more jobs, supplementing domestic investment and transferring advanced technology.

This research note explores the interactions between environmental change and cultural response in a case study focused on the diminution of the northern Scottish North Sea herring fishing industry from c. 1660 to 1707 and its role in the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707. Through an interdisciplinary approach utilizing archival sources of fishing data and proxy sources, this study traces these additional causes of the decline in the Scottish herring industry in northern Scotland and argues that the herring decline was also driven by climatic and environmental change. In addition, it explores where the herring went and why, and demonstrates how a decline of the herring industry affected people in fishing communities in northern Scotland and created groups that supported union between Scotland and England.