British Maritime History National Identity And Film 1900 1960

This thesis examines the creation, transmission and preservation of the idea of Britain as a 'maritime nation' on film from 1900 to 1960. By placing an analysis of maritime films' frequency, content and reception into the broader maritime sphere and the British film industry, this thesis explores how maritime symbols functioned to project national identity. Films are used as the major source to provide an evidential frame through which to assess the depth and functioning of maritime culture in mass culture. The thesis traces the origins of key concepts associated with a maritime identity to establish the configuration of maritime history in popular culture by 1900. It then examines the importance of maritime film production during the period 1900-1939; the representation of shipbuilding from the 1930s; maritime scenarios in Second World War film; maritime comedies; and post-war maritime films. It concludes by suggesting the reasons for the decline in the frequency of maritime film after 1960. The thesis argues first, that the relationship established in the Victorian period between the nation and the maritime sphere endured with remarkable strength. Only after 1960 was the contemporary element of this connection broken by a combination of the decline of the subject matter and by political and social change. The second argument is that to understand these films it is essential to consider them as a complete body of evidence as well as individual films in discrete time periods. By setting these films back into the tradition from which they came is it possible to understand how symbols of national identity became so embedded that they became unquestioned: the most powerful level at which such symbols operate.

Specifically structured around research questions and avenues for further study, and providing the historical context to enable this further research, Modern Naval History is a key historiographical guide for students wishing to gain a deeper understanding of naval history and its contemporary relevance. Navies play an important role in the modern world, and the globalisation of economies, cultures and societies has placed a premium on maritime communications. Modern Naval History demonstrates the importance of naval history today, showing its relevance to a number of disciplines and its role in understanding how navies relate to their host societies. Richard Harding explains why naval history is still important, despite slipping from the attention of policy makers and the public since 1945, and how it can illuminate answers to questions relating to economic, diplomatic, political, social and cultural history. The book explores how naval history has informed these fields and how it can produce a richer and more informed historical understanding of navies and sea power.

Despite the port’s prominence in maritime history, its cultural significance has long been neglected in favour of its role within economic and imperial networks. Defined by their intersection of maritime and urban space, port towns were sites of complex cultural exchanges. This book, the product of international scholarship, offers innovative and challenging perspectives on the cultural histories of ports, ranging from eighteenth-century Africa to twentieth-century Australasia and Europe. The essays in this important collection explore two key themes; the nature and character of ‘sailortown’ culture and port-town life, and the representations of port towns that were forged both within and beyond urban-maritime communities. The book’s exploration of port town identities and cultures, and its use of a rich array of methodological approaches and cultural artefacts, will make it of great interest to both urban and maritime historians. It also represents a major contribution to the emerging, interdisciplinary field of coastal studies.

For as long as humanity has ventured on the seas, naval warfare has been an integral part of their activities and the focal point for many histories and ideas of heritage. This book presents a rarely explored aspect: the long‐term impact of those battles on shorelines, seas and oceans. Dramatic and altering, the physical scars of battles remain with us today in the form of cultural landscapes and archaeological sites, while the geopolitical consequences of warfare have been world‐changing. The migrations of peoples across the seas, accompanied by violence, have done more to shape the demographic and cultural map of the modern world than almost anything else. Both seaborne opportunities and threats have influenced the way of life of coastal communities. Today, technology has seen these threats extend far into the deepest ocean and reach across continents. This book shows how, despite being virtually invisible to an increasing percentage of the world’s population, the ocean is more significant now than it has ever been. Ranging from the world of antiquity to the present day with a global perspective, the volume is intended to appeal to those interested in history, archaeology, social sciences and the environment.

Offering a nostalgic evocation of Britain's maritime heritage (military, commercial and leisure) during the first half of the 20th century, this book presents the testimonies of men and women who lived and worked on the sea when Britain was the foremost maritime nation in the world.

Images of WWI in the popular consciousness normally involve the bloody attrition of trench warfare, the miles of mud, the shattered earth, the tangled miles of barbed wire. However there was another significant arena of war - the battle for control of the sea. In 1914 at the beginning of the war, Britain's maritime supremacy had remained unchallenged for around a hundred years. Many expected another Battle of Trafalgar but advances in technology saw a very different kind of warfare with the widespread use of mines, submarines and torpedoes. This book examines the events that led to war and the naval arms race between Britain and Germany. It traces the events of the war at sea looking at the major battles as well as the effects of unrestricted submarine warfare and the sinking of the Lusitania. It also profiles key figures such as Fisher, Beatty, Tirpitz and Graf von Spee. 'This A5-sized hardback book traces the naval arms race between Britain and Germany prior to World War 1' - Ships Monthly

Nelson continues to fascinate academics as well as the general public. He is still considered one of Britain's greatest heroes and featured within the top ten of the BBC poll of such figures. But why does Nelson still remain such a prominent figure in the national imagination? Beginning with Nelson's early life and an analysis of the condition and practice of the Navy at the time of Nelson's entry into service, Carolan goes on to examine Nelson's naval battles before Trafalgar, particularly the pivotal Battle of the Nile in which the then Rear Admiral Horatio Nelson, with a fleet of fourteen ships, captured six and destroyed seven French vessels out of a total of seventeen and in the process achieved one of the most decisive victories in the age of sail and re-established British command of the Mediterranean. Devoting a full section to the Battle of Trafalgar, Carolan looks in detail at the build-up to the battle, the events and progress of the battle, at the Admirals of the French and Spanish navies and explains why the battle was so decisive in the Napoleonic Wars. She goes on to look at the immediate aftermath of Nelson's death and his state funeral and then to his legacy, the building of monuments (particularly Trafalagar Square and Nelson's Column), the development of the Nelson myth, his depiction in film, his value for propaganda purposes during the two world wars and the current state of scholarship on Nelson.

'Underhand and damned un-English' was the view of submarines in Edwardian Britain. Yet by the 1960s the new nuclear powered submarines were seen by the Royal Navy as being the 'hallmark of a first class navy'. In this book Duncan Redford, a retired Royal Navy submarine officer, explores how - and why - attitudes to the submarine changed in Britain between 1900 and 1977. Using a wide array of previously unpublished sources, Redford sheds light on what the British thought about submarines, both their own and those that were used against them. Rather than providing an operational history of Britain's submarines, this book looks at naval and civilian conceptions of what submarine warfare was imagined to be like in the context of unrestricted submarine warfare, the world wars and the development of nuclear weaponry. With chapters on the coronation and jubilee reviews at Spithead, the submarine in novels and films, as well as coverage of the Royal Navy's and civilian views of submarines and submarine warfare this book gives a comprehensive view of the British regard - or lack of it - for the submarine. Through the examination of the British relationship with submarines since 1900 it is possible to see changing patterns in acceptance and tensions between different sub-cultures, both civil and maritime. Since 1900 the meaning constructed around submarines has changed as the submarine has progressed along a road from perdition as the weapon of the weaker power (and morally weaker power too) to a form of redemption as a major capital unit. This book will be essential for naval historians, students and those interested in aspects of submarine development and use.

This volume contributes to the vibrant, ongoing recuperative work on women's writing by shedding new light on a group of authors commonly dismissed as middlebrow in their concerns and conservative in their styles and politics. The neologism 'interfeminism' - coined to partner Kristin Bluemel's 'intermodernism' - locates this group chronologically and ideologically between two 'waves' of feminism, whilst also forging connections between the political and cultural monoliths that have traditionally overshadowed them. Drawing attention to the strengths of this 'out-of-category' writing in its own right, this volume also highlights how intersecting discourses of gender, class and society in the interwar and post-war periods pave the way for the bold reassessments of female subjectivity that characterise second and third wave feminism. The essays showcase the stylistic, cultural and political vitality of a substantial group of women authors of fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and journalism including Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson, Nancy Mitford, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Rumer Godden, Attia Hosain, Doris Lessing, Kamala Markandaya, Susan Ertz, Marghanita Laski, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Pargeter, Eileen Bigland, Nancy Spain, Vera Laughton Matthews, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier, Barbara Comyns, Shelagh Delaney, Stevie Smith and Penelope Mortimer. Additional exploration of the popular magazines Woman's Weekly and Good Housekeeping and new material from the Vera Brittain archive add an innovative dimension to original readings of the literature of a transformative period of British social and cultural history.