A survey of a wide range of new research on many aspects of life at sea in the early modern period.

Investigates the lives of common sailors engaged in commerce, exploration, privateering and piracy, and naval actions during Tudor and Stuart periods.

A fundamental component of Britain's early success, naval impressment not only kept the Royal Navy afloat--it helped to make an empire. In total numbers, impressed seamen were second only to enslaved Africans as the largest group of forced laborers in the eighteenth century. In The Evil Necessity, Denver Brunsman describes in vivid detail the experience of impressment for Atlantic seafarers and their families. Brunsman reveals how forced service robbed approximately 250,000 mariners of their livelihoods, and, not infrequently, their lives, while also devastating Atlantic seaport communities and the loved ones who were left behind. Press gangs, consisting of a navy officer backed by sailors and occasionally local toughs, often used violence or the threat of violence to supply the skilled manpower necessary to establish and maintain British naval supremacy. Moreover, impressments helped to unite Britain and its Atlantic coastal territories in a common system of maritime defense unmatched by any other European empire. Drawing on ships' logs, merchants' papers, personal letters and diaries, as well as engravings, political texts, and sea ballads, Brunsman shows how ultimately the controversy over impressment contributed to the American Revolution and served as a leading cause of the War of 1812. Early American HistoriesWinner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an Outstanding Work of Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Studies

A deeply researched, analytically rich, and vivid account of England's early maritime empire Drawing on a wealth of understudied sources, historian Eleanor Hubbard explores the labor conflicts behind the rise of the English maritime empire. Freewheeling Elizabethan privateering attracted thousands of young men to the sea, where they acquired valuable skills and a reputation for ruthlessness. Peace in 1603 forced these predatory seamen to adapt to a radically changed world, one in which they were expected to risk their lives for merchants' gain, not plunder. Merchant trading companies expected sailors to relinquish their unruly ways and to help convince overseas rulers and trading partners that the English were a courteous and trustworthy "nation." Some sailors rebelled, becoming pirates and renegades; others demanded and often received concessions and shares in new trading opportunities. Treated gently by a state that was anxious to promote seafaring in order to man the navy, these determined sailors helped to keep the sea a viable and attractive trade for Englishmen.