Champion of the Quarterdeck: Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower (1742–1814)

2011

The background image is A Visit of Inspection, oil on canvas, by Arthur David McCormick (1860-1943), date unknown. In this unidentified historical scene, the artist shows an inspection of warships under construction at Dover, England, in the late seventeenth century. On the cliffs above, Dover Castle is flying what appears to be the Royal Standard. The artist was born in Coleraine, Ireland, and was trained at the College of Design in Belfast. He was known for his historical drawings and watercolors illustrating events in English naval history. Courtesy Naval War College Museum; the painting was given by Rear Admiral Charles A. Curtze to the Naval War College Foundation in 1994. The inset photo and title page show Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, USN, wearing his Oxford academic robe, 1946. On 26 June 1946, Oxford University conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law on Fleet Admiral King, along with the other members of the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff during World War II. In presenting him for his degree in Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre, the Public Orator described King's achievements in Latin, using the metaphor of the Trident and three-pronged nature of naval warfare: "necque Glauci regno nec Neptuni nec ipsius Iovis Tonatis intermerato," or, "one who had invaded alike the realms of Glaucus, of Neptune, and of Jove the Thunderer." A strong supporter of the professional understanding and study of maritime history, Fleet Admiral King in 1953 personally approved Secretary of the Navy Robert Anderson's proposal that the Naval War College name its academic chair in Maritime History in his honor.

2021

Review of Admiral Gorshkov: The Man Who Challenged the U.S. Navy by Norman Polmar, Thomas A. Brooks and George E. Federof

of the Royal Naval Museum for enabling us to hold the conference in this ideal location, with HMS Victory in sight of the conference room and hardly a hundred yards away. The programme was packed with five papers and whether because of this, the venue, the brilliant crisp blue sky or a combination of these factors, we had a very good attendance.

The Mariner's Mirror, 2017

The International History Review, 2016

This article examines the scholarly reputation of the late Professor Arthur J. Marder. Once universally acclaimed as the doyen of historians of the Royal Navy in the First World War era, in recent times his work has come in for sustained criticism from a small group of revisionist historians, who not only dispute his conclusions, but argue that his entire methodology and approach were fundamentally flawed. This article assesses the specific charges of inadequate scholarship levelled against Marder by these revisionist historians and concludes that, while aspects of Marder's analysis may well be open to dispute, there are no grounds for attacking his scholarly integrity. On the contrary, he thoroughly deserves his reputation as a pioneering and painstaking scholar.

Sydney journal, 2017

There is an old story that shortly after his return from the Americas, Christopher Columbus was dining with some Spanish nobles who downplayed the difficulties involved in making this voyage. By way of an answer, he took a raw egg and challenged them to make it stand upon its end. They replied that it could not be done. Columbus then gently tapped the egg so that he broke the shell but not the membrane, creating a flat surface on which the egg could rest. On seeing this, the nobles exclaimed, 'ʹBut that is easy!'ʹ To which Columbus is said to have replied, 'ʹIt is now'ʹ. 1 The transportation of convicts to New South Wales in the early years of settlement, and the First Fleet in particular, was a great deal more challenging than has generally been recognised. Phillip described it as a voyage 'ʹto the extremity of the globe'ʹ. As late as 1802, the political philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, compared it to a voyage to the moon: 'ʹThe moon was then, as it continues to be, inaccessible; on earth there was no accessible spot more distant than New South Wales'ʹ. 2 Newspaper editors thought that most of the First Fleet convicts would die en route: 'ʹthe first land that two-thirds of them will reach, will be the bottom of the sea'ʹ. That so many of them arrived in good health came as a great surprise to the military and civilian officers who sailed on that founding voyage. 3 Ten per cent of the convicts shipped to Australia in the first seven years of settlement perished in the passage. We often speak of the mortality rate on the First Fleet as though it consisted only of the 21 male convicts and three women (around three percent) who died in the course of the voyage. But given that the deaths on the Alexander and Lady Penrhyn prior to sailing arose from diseases loaded on board from the prisons, we should include those and some who died from disease in the weeks after landing, which raises the mortality rate to somewhere in the range of five to nine percent. 4 And it was not just the convicts: the mortality rate among First Fleet mariners was more than one in five, twice that of the prisoners once time at sea is taken into account. They died of shipboard accidents on the outward voyage and scurvy on the way home. 5

Britain and the World, 2014

It is the contention of this article that historians of the nineteenth century need to think about notions of empire, nation, and race in the context of the social production of space. More specifically, it posits that the moving space of the steamship functioned as a particularly important site in which travellers reworked ideas about themselves and their worlds. Supporting this contention the article pays close attention to the journeys of J. T. Wilson, a young Scottish medical student who between 1884 and 1887 made three voyages to China and one to Australia. For it was in the space of the ship, literally moving along the routes of global trade, that Wilson forged a particular kind of British identity that collapsed the spaces of empire, elided differences among Britons and extended the boundaries of the British nation.

My discussion of selected work on the history of technology is informed by three themes. First, the end of World War II marks a period in which, as historian Barton Hacker observes, “military authorities have come eagerly to accept or even promote … the introduction of new weapons.” Military authorities’ adoption of the idea that “doctrine might drive and control technological change” makes the post-World War II period very different from the past two hundred years of military history. Indeed, the idea that military technological change might be controlled and directed had ample precedent in the development of new industries in the late nineteenth century organized around telecommunications, photographic, electrical, and chemical technologies that exploited then-recent scientific discoveries. Industrial leaders recognized their dependence on science, and established research components—industrial research laboratories—to routinize scientific research to develop improved processes and products. Post-World War II military leaders applied an existing and proven approach to improving products and processes. The second theme concerns the post-World War II role of knowledge and analysis in making decisions and policy about public expenditures on inventive activity and technology development. In my view, the appropriate perspective on the role of knowledge and analysis in inventive activity concerns the co-evolution of institutions and military, social, political, and economic organizations; not whether a law-like generalization can be offered regarding the role of knowledge and analysis in individuals’ efforts to invent or apply technology. This theme echoes the views of prominent military historians. For example, Barton Hacker notes that “the concept of military technology has grown beyond hardware to embrace ideas and institutions; organization, management, and doctrine have become as much a part of the field as weapon development.” Alex Roland adds that the military is a social institution and it “plays an enormously important … complex role in the development of science and technology.” My third theme concerns Frederick Pohl’s observation: “A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.” In other words, insight comes from describing and tracing interactions and contextual relationships—not just the technology itself. Pohl, an acclaimed science fiction writer, implies a better story involves examining interactions among inventions, modes of behavior, cultural history, political and social institutions, military organizations, and legacy stock of equipment, infrastructure, and hardware and social technologies. In my view, developing a capability—concepts, methodologies, organizations, and working relationships—to examine, assess, and predict “traffic jams” of naval (and, more broadly, military) operations requires overcoming challenges to the many ways the historical and analytical communities interact and work. This difficult task is worth pursuing to make discourse about national security questions more rigorous, and to increase the value to senior leaders of the products produced within the historical-analytical community.