The long, salty arm of the law: Colonial Connecticut's litigated maritime economy and the origins of modern contracts

This article examines maritime trade litigation tied to a typical New England jurisdiction – New London County, Connecticut – to reveal two important eighteenth-century trends. First, decision-makers prioritized honouring contract promises – a critical shift from earlier Puritan ideals that privileged fairness in agreements. This transition was essential to developing what became the will theory of contract, in which promise and performance replaced equity as the measures of valid agreements. This shift appeared in Connecticut nearly a century before scholars have suggested it did in the United States. The second trend involves litigants’ choice of court. Despite the availability of several tribunals for pursuing maritime-based legal actions, parties regularly chose the county court to resolve their issues. In an expanding and increasingly impersonal Atlantic marketplace, parties preferred the flexible and familiar proceedings of the local court because judges and jurors treated mariners as if they carried Connecticut's legal protections with them on their distant travels.

The Titanic’s ‘low-lying’, silent distress rockets explained

One of a few remaining mysteries about the Titanic saga is the inaction of the nearby ship, the Californian. Her officers were watching the sinking Titanic for more than two hours and yet did nothing to help, although they saw the rockets that the stricken liner was firing. This article explains what weather phenomena could have affected the visibility and audibility of the rockets in such a way that confused the Californian's officers. It also discusses similarities between the inaction of the Californian and the inaction of Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston in the Battle of Seven Pines that took place in 1862 during the American Civil War.

Death lurks in grey seas: Experiences of the maritime crossing between Argentina and Europe during the First World War

In recent years, the repercussions of the First World War in Latin America have received increasing attention in the academic literature. However, the impact of the war at sea on the continent has not been exhaustively investigated. With the belligerents fighting for control of overseas communication and trade routes, passengers and sailors embarked on ocean liners and cargo ships to travel between South America and Europe. This article explores and analyses the experiences of those who crossed the Atlantic to and from the Argentine Republic. In so doing, it adds a Latin American dimension to the knowledge and understanding of the 1914–18 naval war.

A pioneering cruising enterprise: The North of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland Steam Navigation Company, 1886–1908

Commercial cruising began around 1880. Underlying factors were the iron steamship that enabled scheduled sailings and larger, more comfortable vessels and growing incomes in industrialising countries that increased the potential market for tourism. Britain took the lead in cruising development. This article examines a pioneering enterprise, The North of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland Steamship Navigation Company – the name reflects its sphere of operation. In 1886, the company began providing cruise voyages out of Aberdeen and Leith. It offered a new product, cheap and short cruises to the Norwegian fjords. The success of the first season led to the ordering of a new vessel, the St Sunniva, specifically designed for cruising and arguably the first cruise ship. The Company operated cruises chiefly to the fjords, but also to the Baltic and the Mediterranean, completing a total of 224 cruises between 1886 and 1908. Such sustained participation was due to imaginative and efficient organisation. Press advertising, the employment of travel agents, block bookings and private charters were used to gain business. The Company's vessels employed local pilots and from early on carried ‘conductors’, who were forerunners of the ‘cruise director’. The Company's success and innovations encouraged other firms to enter the cruising market, notably large liner companies such as P&O, Union Castle and Royal Mail after 1900. These used much larger vessels with better, more luxurious facilities. The North of Scotland Company, with its smaller and older vessels, could not compete and it withdrew from cruising in 1908.

Mughal port officials and European company-men: The dynamics of a commercial relationship in the seventeenth century

The description of the Mughals as a land-driven power that remained largely inert to maritime opportunities and challenges does not sufficiently explain their increasing reliance on the seaborne delivery of strategic goods such as horses, bullion and specialised military labour. In this context, the article focuses on the office of mutasaddi, which operationalised Mughal authority at the port of Surat. By analysing the interactions of mutasaddis with European trading companies, it is shown that the Mughal presence was central to the shaping of the maritime trajectory of the region. As long as the Mughal oversight was vigilant, the port officials dominated the Europeans. But once the Mughal presence came to be hollowed out, new forces set in that ultimately enabled the Europeans to turn the tables on the port officials.

Diplomacy and the challenges of resolving maritime boundary disputes in West Africa: Weighing the options in the case of Ghana and its immediate neighbours

Over the years, the international community has ensured the peaceful resolution of conflict among states. This is reflected in the Charter of the United Nations, where peaceful resolution of international disputes is promoted to ensure global peace and security. The use of diplomacy and pacific settlement of international dispute has been promoted among conflicting states due to its perceived inherent merits. This research explores the significance of diplomacy in resolving maritime boundary disputes in West Africa, placing emphasis on the disputes between Ghana and its neighbours. It does this by looking at secondary data, as well as the unpublished meeting minutes of the parties, to assess diplomacy and other pacific channels of conflict resolution as opposed to third-party dispute processes. The paper highlights diplomacy as the most appropriate means to resolve maritime boundary disputes in West Africa, particularly those confronting Ghana and its neighbours.

Buchan’s Domestic Medicine and Thomas Huggan, drunken surgeon of the Bounty

The sixth-edition copy (1779) of William Buchan's Domestic Medicine that belonged to Thomas Huggan, surgeon of the Bounty (d.1788 at Tahiti), has been in the National Maritime Museum since 1963. This research note comments on the implications of annotations in it, briefly considers its owner in the context of the status of naval surgeons at the time, and provides hitherto unpublished information on his prior career history and connections.

Of a titan, winds and power: Transnational development of the icebreaker, 1890-1954

Icebreakers have traditionally been seen as symbols of technological nationalism. While ship science for open-water vessels developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, understanding of how to cope with polar and subarctic ice conditions lagged behind. This led state organizations in charge of icebreaking services to minimize risks in the development of new vessels by encouraging transnational expert cooperation. This article argues that such interactions were critical to the evolution of the modern icebreaker. We examine the development of three icebreakers in different countries in successive decades, and the critical technologies with which they are associated: the Ymer from Sweden and diesel–electric propulsion (1933); the American ‘Wind’ class and power-hull proportion (1942–1946); and the Voima from Finland and twin bow propellers (1956). We reconstruct the flow of information to explain the rationale for transnational cooperation in maritime technology development. The concept of ‘technology carriers’ is deployed in the analysis to enhance understanding of the role of international cooperation in polar and winter seafaring.