anteros_lmc | New Researchers in Maritime History Conference

Well I think

nodbear and I managed to navigate the New Researchers in Maritime History Conference without anyone twigging that we're actually just a pair of silly fangirls! ;)

Glenlee mainmast at night

The conference started on Friday night aboard the Glenlee with a keynote by Prof Tony Slaven on 500 years of the British ship building industry. It has to be said that the first 400 years got rather short shrift and most of the presentation focused on the decline of the ship building industry during the 20th century. It was fascinating though as both

nodbear and I are old enough to remember the final death throes of the shipyards. It was also a salutary reminder of sheer the scale and innovation of the Clyde shipyards during the last century. Though of course we know that the greatest thing ever to come out of Clydebank was not the Dreadnoughts or HMS Hood but

esmerelda_t!

The conference proper took place on Saturday and I have to say we were extremely impressed by the quality of all the presentations. In fact in terms of the breadth and depth of the papers, it's probably the best academic conference I've been to for a while. There were about forty people there and the audience was more or less split between postgrads and elderly grey haired gentlemen. All the papers were excellent but we had two favourites. AnnaSara Hammar of the University of Umea in Sweden presented some fascinating research based on original documents on the duty of care that officers owed to their men in the 17th century Swedish Navy, and Hannah Roberts of Kings College London presented some wonderful and highly entertaining research on the lives of the Women's Royal Naval Service in the Second World War. Hannah pointed out that she was the only one present who was lucky enough to have living subjects to interview and she had some wonderful anecdotes from the surviving WRENS she has interviewed. Other highlights included Lilia Campana of Texas A&M University with a frighteningly detailed paper on the technical development of Venetian galleys, Jennifer Daley on the depiction of sailors uniforms in Victorian portraiture and Thomasin Summerford on the development of sea surgeons chest between 1500 and 1700, a presentation that would no doubt have enthralled Dr Maturin!

Beside's

nodbear and I there was only one other independent researcher, a retired lawyer who gave a ~~rather dull~~ presentation on investment in the 19th century Cornish maritime trade. We also happened to be the only presenters speaking about a person rather than a topic. Our presentation on George Cadogan: A career in Courts Martial, 1804 - 1809, seemed to go well and although we only got one question afterwards we got loads of positive feedback during the coffee break. Several people said they'd found the paper very entertaining and had really enjoyed the way we presented it. (Nod did the presentation and I read out quotes from George Cadogan, Pellew, Spencer, Jane Austen et al.) One of the conference organisers said our presentation sounded like an edition of the Radio 4 history programme The Long View! We also got several queries from people who were interested in what we planned to do with the research next.

So all in all it was a very enjoyable and hopefully rather successful event. And of course we couldn't have done it without the support of all the fabulous fangirls and inspiration from the wonderful navyboys :)