Show Notes
This episode forms part of a new strand of our podcast: Seapower Past and Present which explores seapower as it is understood and practised in the modern world whilst offering a historical perspective on the themes we explore. Each episode is chosen according to a theme or a location – a hotspot in the modern world where seapower has a major influence on geopolitics. So if you enjoy this episode do please seek out others in this strand – you will shortly be able to find episodes on economic warfare, critical national infrastructure, how technology is changing the nature of warfare at sea; and on hugely significant locations in the modern maritime world – the Black Sea, South China Sea, Middle East and Arctic.
To make this series come alive we’ve teamed up with the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre. In each episode you will hear from at least one historian and from at least one practitioner, a member of the armed forces who has direct first hand, personal experience of the topic being discussed.
In this episode, Dr Sam Willis speaks to three guests at the Royal Naval Base in Portsmouth to help us understand seapower in the South China Sea. This region is rich in maritime history and diverse in its modern strategic concerns. To discuss this further, the podcast is joined by Dr Jennifer Sabourah-Till from Permanent Joint Headquarters, who commands joint and multinational military operations on behalf of the Ministry of Defence. Dr Matthew Heaslip, Senior Lecturer in Naval History at the University of Portsmouth, also joins to discuss the Royal Navy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He provides expert knowledge on the use of gunboat diplomacy, amphibious operations and imperial policing in the South China Sea. Also joining Sam in this episode is Joe Reilly, a junior Warfare Officer in the Royal Navy who has previously spent time in the Asia-Pacific theatre on board the patrol vessel HMS Spey. Joe is also a Richmond Fellow with the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from The Mariner's Mirror Podcast
On 21 October 1805, HMS Victory led the British fleet into one of the most famous battles in naval history. But what was Trafalgar really like for the ordinary sailors who fought it? Six weeks after the battle, David Johns, a Welsh sailor from Kidwelly in Carmarthenshire, sat aboard Victory at Spithead and wrote a remarkable letter to his parents. He described the terrifying intensity of the fighting, the enemy ships surrounding Victory, and the death of Admiral Nelson. His words offer a rare and deeply personal account of Trafalgar, written before the battle had passed into legend.
When we think of historic ships, we tend to picture warships, explorers and celebrated voyages. SS Explorer is a different kind of maritime hero: a ship built not to conquer the sea, but to understand it. In this episode, recorded on board the Explorer in Leith, Scotland, we explore how this pioneering 1950s fisheries research vessel became a floating laboratory, measuring fish, plankton, currents, temperature and salinity to answer an increasingly urgent question: could the sea continue providing indefinitely? The painstaking science conducted aboard Explorer helped transform our understanding of the oceans from an inexhaustible larder into a living ecosystem—and laid foundations for modern fisheries management and marine conservation. Now undergoing restoration she is a rare survivor from a transformative period in Britain’s scientific and maritime history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1677 Charles II embarked on one of the most ambitious shipbuilding programmes England had ever attempted: thirty great new warships, built to challenge the naval power of France and the Dutch Republic. Two years later, a young shipwright and draughtsman named Edmund Dummer began travelling between the dockyards, measuring their hulls and recording their shapes. His aim was extraordinary — to capture on paper knowledge that had traditionally lived in the hands, eyes and memories of shipwrights. But political crisis intervened, Dummer’s work was left unfinished, and much of it was subsequently lost. In this episode of the Mariner’s Mirror Podcast, Sam Willis talks to historian and shipbuilding expert Richard Endsor, who has spent more than twenty-five years piecing that lost fleet back together. Using Dummer’s surviving measurements alongside ship models, Van de Velde drawings, official records and wreck archaeology, Richard has reconstructed the architecture of Charles II’s vanished warships in his magnificent new book The Lost Ships of Charles II's Navy. Their conversation explores how seventeenth-century ships were actually designed, how far Charles II involved himself in naval affairs, and whether putting the shipwright’s craft onto paper helped transform not just shipbuilding, but the ability of the state to understand and control its navy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This is episode 5 of our Heritage Harbours short series, celebrating the Heritage Harbour initiative which seeks to protect and revive historic ports, docks, canals and waterfronts that still retain a genuine working maritime character.
This is episode 4 of our Heritage Harbours short series, celebrating the Heritage Harbour initiative which seeks to protect and revive historic ports, docks, canals and waterfronts that still retain a genuine working maritime character.