This is the first book to systematically integrate 'Jack Tar,' the common seaman, into the cultural history of modern Britain, treating him not as an occasional visitor from the ocean, but as an important part of national life.

This book foregrounds the role of the Royal Navy in creating the British Atlantic in the eighteenth century. It outlines the closely entwined connections between the nurturing of naval supremacy, the politics of commercial protection, and the development of national and imperial identities – crucial factors in the consolidation and transformation of the British Atlantic empire. The collection brings together scholars working on aspects of the Royal Navy and the British Atlantic in order to gain a better understanding of the ways that the Navy protected, facilitated, and shaped the British-Atlantic empire in the era of war, revolution, counter-revolution, and upheaval between the beginning of the Seven Years War and the end of the conflict with Napoleonic France. Contributions question the limits – conceptually and geographically – of that Atlantic world, suggesting that, by considering the Royal Navy and the British Atlantic together, we can gain greater insights into Britain’s maritime history.

Cases of mutiny and other forms of protest are used to reveal full and interesting details of lascar shipboard life.

Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present explores the relationship between the sea and culture from the early modern period to the present. The collection uses the concept of the ‘sea narrative’ as a lens through which to consider the multiple ways in which the sea has shaped, challenged, and expanded modes of cultural representation to produce varied, contested and provocative chronicles of the sea across a variety of cultural forms within diverse socio-cultural moments. Sea Narratives provides a unique perspective on the relationship between the sea and cultural production: it reveals the sea to be more than simply a source of creative inspiration, instead showing how the sea has had a demonstrable effect on new modes and forms of narration across the cultural sphere, and in turn, how these forms have been essential in shaping socio-cultural understandings of the sea. The result is an incisive exploration of the sea’s force as a cultural presence.

Explores foreign seamen's employment in the British Royal Navy of the French Wars, and deconstructs the meanings of 'foreignness' itself.

The suppression of the Atlantic slave trade has puzzled nineteenth-century contemporaries and historians since, as the British Empire turned naval power and moral outrage against a branch of commerce it had done so much to promote. The assembled authors bridge the gap between ship and shore to reveal the motives, effects, and legacies of this campaign. As the first academic history of Britain’s campaign to suppress the Atlantic slave trade in more than thirty years, the book gathers experts in history, literature, historical geography, museum studies, and the history of medicine to analyse naval suppression in light of recent work on slavery and empire. Three sections reveal the policies, experiences and representations of slave-trade suppression from the perspectives of metropolitan Britons, liberated Africans, black sailors, colonialists, and naval officers.

The volume explores how the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were experienced, perceived and narrated by contemporaries in Britain and Ireland, drawing on an extensive range of personal testimonies by soldiers, sailors and civilians to shed new light on the social and cultural history of the period and the history of warfare more broadly.

Battles, blockades, convoys, raids: An “impressive” account of how the indefatigable British Royal Navy ensured Napoleon’s ultimate defeat (International Journal of Military History). Horatio Nelson’s celebrated victory over the French at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 presented Britain with an unprecedented command of the seas. Yet the Royal Navy’s role in the struggle against Napoleonic France was far from over. This groundbreaking book asserts that, contrary to the accepted notion that the Battle of Trafalgar essentially completed the Navy’s task, the war at sea actually intensified over the next decade, ceasing only with Napoleon’s final surrender. In this dramatic account of naval contributions between 1803 and 1815, James Davey offers original and exciting insights into the Napoleonic wars and Britain’s maritime history. Encompassing Trafalgar, the Peninsular War, the War of 1812, the final campaign against Napoleon, and many lesser known but likewise crucial moments, the book sheds light on the experiences of individuals high and low, from admiral and captain to sailor and cabin boy. The cast of characters also includes others from across Britain—dockyard workers, politicians, civilians—who made fundamental contributions to the war effort, and in so doing, both saved the nation and shaped Britain’s history.

"First published in 2014 by the Penguin Group"--Title page verso.