BIBLIOGRAPHY
MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
The National Archives, Kew: Repository for all Admiralty papers. The musters of navy ships (ADM 36 series) have been an essential resource, providing information about seamen’s backgrounds and data for testing the veracity of individual accounts. Captains’ logbooks (ADM 51 series) offer further insights into shipboard life and punishment records. Court-martial hearings (ADM 1 series) taken down in the shorthand of the day give voice to seamen’s conduct and grievances.
British Library, London: East India Company records
Caird Library, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
The Library of the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth
SEAMEN’S MEMOIRS
Primary
Campbell, Archibald: A Voyage Around the World from 1806 to 1812. Edinburgh, 1822
Childers, Spencer (ed.): A Mariner of England – An Account of the Career of William Richardson, 1780 to 1819. London, 1908 (reprint)
Choyce, James: The Log of a Jack Tar. Maidstone, 1973
Dann, John C. (ed.): The Nagle Journal – A Diary of the Life of Jacob Nagle, Sailor, from the Year 1717 to 1841. New York, 1988
Forester, C. S. (ed.): The Adventures of John Wetherell. London, 1994
Fowler, John (ed.): The Life and Literary Remains of Charles Reece Pemberton. London, 1843 (online)
Hay, M. D. (ed.): Landsman Hay – Memoirs of Robert Hay, 1789–1847. London, 1953
Leech, Samuel: A Voice from the Main Deck – Being a Record of the Thirty Years’ Adventures of Samuel Leech. London, 1999
Nicol, John: The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner. Edinburgh, 1822 (online, or in paperback, edited by Tim Flannery, Edinburgh, 2000)
Robinson, William: Nautical Economy; or Forecastle Reflections of Events During the Last War. London, 1832 (online, or in paperback, titled Jack Nastyface, Memoirs of an English Seaman, London, 2002)
Rodger, N. A. M. (ed.): Memoirs of a Seafaring Life – The Narrative of William Spavens. Bath, 2001
Watson, George: A Narrative of the Adventures of a Greenwich Pensioner. Newcastle, 1827
Secondary
Barlow, Edward: Barlow’s Journal of his Life at Sea from 1659 to 1703. London, 1934
Brooks, George, S. (ed.): James Durand an Able Seaman of 1812 – His Adventures in ‘Old Ironsides’ and as an Impressed Sailor in the British Navy. New Haven, 1926
Bulkeley, John, and Cummins, John: A Voyage to the South Seas in the Years 1740–41. London, 1757 (online)
Davis, Joshua: A Narrative of Joshua Davis, an American Citizen who was Pressed and Served on Six Ships of the British Navy. Baltimore, 1811 (online)
Garstin, Crosbie (ed.): Samuel Kelly – An Eighteenth-Century Seaman. London, 1922
Goodall, Daniel: Salt Water Sketches – Being Incidents in the Life of Daniel Goodall, Seaman and Marine. Inverness, 1860 (reprint)
Hamilton, Richard, and Laughton, John Knox (eds): Above and Under Hatches – Recollections of James Anthony Gardner. London, 2000
Knight, Roger, and Frost, Alan (eds): The Journal of Daniel Paine, 1794–1797. Sydney, 1983
Meyerstein, E. H. W. (ed.): Adventures by Sea of Edward Coxere. Oxford, 1945
Morris, Isaac: A Narrative of the Dangers and Distresses which Befell Isaac Morris and Seven more of the Crew Belonging to the Wager. London, 1751 (online)
Murray, Jean (ed.): The Newfoundland Journal of Aaron Thomas, 1794. London, 1968
Parsons, George: I Sailed With Nelson. Maidstone, 1973
Price, George: Pressganged – The Letters of George Price of Southwark. Royston, 1984
Sherburne, Andrew: Memoirs of Andrew Sherburne, a Pensioner of the Navy of the Revolution. Long Island, 1831 (online)
OTHER PUBLISHED WORKS
Ackroyd, Peter: London, the Biography. London, 2000
Adkins, Roy and Lesley: Jack Tar – Life in Nelson’s Navy. London, 2008
Alexander, Caroline: The Bounty – The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. London, 2003
Anon.: The Sailors Advocate. London, 1728 (Download)
Baynham, Henry: From the Lower Deck – The Navy, 1700–1840. London, 1972
Blake, Richard: Evangelicals in the Royal Navy, 1775–1815. Suffolk, 2008
Bolster, W. Jeffrey: Black Jacks – African American Seamen in the Age of Sail. Cambridge, MA, 1997
Boston, Ceridwen, Witkin, Annsofie, Boyle, Angela, and Wilkinson, David: Safe Moor’d in Greenwich Tier – A Study of the Skeletons of Royal Navy Sailors and Marines Excavated at the Royal Hospital, Greenwich. Oxford, 2008
Bowen, H. V., Lincoln, Margarette, and Rigby, Nigel (eds): The Worlds of the East India Company. Suffolk, 2002
Bromley, J. S.: The Manning of the Royal Navy – Selected Pamphlets, 1693–1873. Navy Records Society, 1976
Brown, Kevin: Poxed and Scurvied – The Story of Sickness and Health at Sea. Barnsley, 2011
Bundock, Michael: The Fortunes of Francis Barber – The True Story of the Jamaican Slave Who Became Samuel Johnson’s Heir. London, 2015
Burg, B. R.: Boys at Sea – Sodomy, Indecency and Courts Martial in Nelson’s Navy. Basingstoke, 2007
Byrn, John D.: Crime and Punishment in the Royal Navy – Discipline on the Leeward Islands Station, 1784–1812. Aldershot, 1989
Byrn, John D. (ed.): Naval Courts Martial, 1793–1815. Navy Records Society, 2009
Carretta, Vincent: Equiano, the African – Biography of a Self-Made Man. London, 2006
Carrington, Richard: A Biography of the Sea. London, 1965
Chatterton, E. Keble: The Old East Indiamen. London, 1914
Clayton, Tim: Tars – The Men Who Made Britain Rule the Waves. London, 2007
Coats, Ann Veronica, and MacDougall, Philip (eds): The Naval Mutinies of 1797: Unity and Perseverance. Martlesham, Suffolk, 2011
Colley, Linda: Britons – Forging the Nation, 1707–1837. London, 1992
Colley, Linda: Captives – Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850. London, 2002
Colley, Linda: The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh – A Woman in World History. London, 2007
Conrad, Joseph: The Mirror of the Sea & A Personal Record. London, 2008
Conrad, Joseph: The Secret Sharer and Other Stories (formerly entitled The Nigger of the Narcissus). London, 2014
Cordingly, David: Heroines and Harlots – Women at Sea in the Great Age of Sail. London, 2001
Cordingly, David: Billy Ruffian – The Biography of a Ship of the Line. London, 2003
Cotton, Sir Evan, and Fawcett, Charles: East Indiamen – The East India Company’s Maritime Service. London, 1949
Crawford, Captain A.: Reminiscences of a Naval Officer. London, 1999
Cunningham, A. E. (ed.): Patrick O’Brian – Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography. Wetherby, 1995
Dancy, J. Ross: The Myth of the Press Gang – Volunteers, Impressment and the Naval Manpower Problem in the 18th Century. Martlesham, Suffolk, 2015
Davey, James: In Nelson’s Wake – How the Navy Ruled the Waves After Trafalgar. London, 2015
Derriman, James: Marooned – The Story of a Cornish Seaman. Emsworth, Hampshire, 1991
Dugan, James: The Great Mutiny. London, 1966
Earle, Peter: Sailors – English Merchant Seamen, 1650–1775. London, 2007
Eder, Marckus: Crime and Punishment in the Royal Navy of the Seven Years’ War, 1755–1763. Aldershot, 2004
Fielding, Henry: Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (online)
Fort, Tom: The Village News – The Truth Behind England’s Rural Idyll. London, 2017
Fraser, Edward: The Sailors Whom Nelson Led – Their Doings Described by Themselves. London, 1913
Fury, Cheryl (ed.): The Social History of English Seamen, 1650–1815. Martlesham, Suffolk, 2017
Garneray, Louis (translated by Richard Rose): The Floating Prison – Nine Years of Captivity on the British Prison Hulks. London, 2003
Gilje, Paul: Liberty on the Waterfront – American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution. Philadelphia, 2004
Gill, Conrad: The Naval Mutinies of 1797. London, 1913
Gradish, Stephen: The Manning of the British Navy during the Seven Years’ War. London, 1980
Grindal, Peter: Opposing the Slavers – The Royal Navy’s Campaign against the Atlantic Slave Trade. London, 2016
Hatchway, Lt.: The Greenwich Pensioners. London, 1838
Hepper, David: British Warship Losses in the Age of Sail, 1650–1859. Rotherfield, East Sussex, 1994
Hirst, Warwick: The Man Who Stole the Cyprus – A True Story of Escape. New South Wales, 2008
Holmes, Richard: Redcoat – The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket. London, 2001
Holmes, Richard: The Age of Wonder – How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. London, 2009
Hood, Jean: Marked for Misfortune – An Epic Tale of Shipwreck, Human Endeavour and Survival in the Age of Sail. London, 2003
Hough, Richard: Captain James Cook. London, 1994
Hughes, Robert: The Fatal Shore – A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787–1868. London, 1987
Inglefield, Captain J.: The Loss of His Majesty’s Ship Centaur, in Archibald Duncan (ed.), The Mariner’s Chronicle, 1834 (online)
James, Lawrence: The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. London, 1994
Kemp, Peter: The British Sailor – A Social History of the Lower Deck. London, 1970
Keneally, Tom: The Commonwealth of Thieves – The Story of the Founding of Australia. London, 2006
Kennedy, Gavin: Captain Bligh – The Man and his Mutinies. London, 1989
Knight, Roger: The Pursuit of Victory – The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson. London, 2005
Knight, Roger: Britain Against Napoleon – The Organization of Victory, 1793–1815. London, 2013
Lamb, Jonathan: Scurvy: The Disease of Discovery. Princeton, 2016
Lambert, Andrew: The Challenge – Britain Against America in the Naval War of 1812. London, 2012
Land, Isaac: War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor, 1750–1850. New York, 2009
Lavery, Brian: Nelson’s Navy – The Ships, Men and Organisation, 1793–1815. London, 1989
Lavery, Brian: Shipboard Life and Organisation, 1731–1815. Navy Records Society, vol. 138, 1998
Leonard, Peter: Records of a Voyage to the Western Coast of Africa . . . etc. 1833 (online)
Lewis, Michael: A Social History of the Navy 1793–1815. London, 1960
Liddell Hart, B. H. (ed.): The Letters of Private Wheeler, 1809–1828. London, 1951
Lincoln, Margarette: Naval Wives and Mistresses. London, 2007
Lincoln, Margarette: Trading in War – London’s Maritime World in the Age of Cook and Nelson. London, 2018
Lloyd, Christopher (ed.): The Health of Seamen. Navy Records Society, 1964
Lloyd, Christopher: The British Seaman. London, 1968
McCullough, David: 1776 – America and Britain at War. London, 2006
Magra, Christopher: Poseidon’s Curse – British Naval Impressment and the Atlantic Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, 2016
Manwaring, G. E., and Dobree, Bonamy: Mutiny – The Floating Republic. London, 1987
May, Trevor: Smugglers and Smuggling. Oxford, 2014
Moorey, Peter: Who Was the Sailor Murdered at Hindhead? Haslemere, 2000
Morriss, Roger: The Channel Fleet and the Blockade of Brest, 1793–1801. Navy Records Society, 2001
Mostert, Noel: The Line Upon a Wind – An Intimate History of the Last and Greatest War Fought at Sea under Sail, 1793–1815. London, 2007
Nash, M. D.: Last Voyage of the Guardian, 1789–91. Cape Town, 1990
Neale, Jonathan: The Cutlass & The Lash – Mutiny and Discipline in Nelson’s Navy, London, 1985
Nicolson, Adam: Men of Honour – Trafalgar and the Making of the English Hero. London, 2006
Padfield, Peter: Nelson’s War. London, 1976
Padfield, Peter: Maritime Power and the Struggle for Freedom, 1788–1851. London, 2003
Parkinson, C. Northcote: War in the Eastern Seas, 1793–1815. London, 1954
Parkinson, C. Northcote: Trade in the Eastern Seas, 1793–1813. London, 1966
Pasley, Sir Thomas: Private Sea Journals, 1778–82. London, 1931
Philbrick, Nathaniel: In the Heart of the Sea. London, 2000
Philp, Mark (ed.): Resisting Napoleon – The British Response to the Threat of Invasion, 1797–1815. London, 2006
Pietsch, Roland: The Real Jim Hawkins – Ships’ Boys in the Georgian Navy. Barnsley, 2010
Pope, Dudley: Life in Nelson’s Navy. London, 1981
Pope, Dudley: The Black Ship. Barnsley, 2003
Porter, Roy: English Society in the 18th Century. London, 1991
Rediker, Marcus: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Cambridge, 1987
Rees, Sian: The Floating Brothel. London, 2001
Rees, Sian: Sweet Water and Bitter – The Ships that Stopped the Slave Trade. London, 2009
Richmond, H. W.: The Navy in India, 1763–1783. London, 1931
Robinson, Charles: The British Tar in Fact and Fiction. London, 1909
Rodger, N. A. M.: The Wooden World – An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy. London, 1988.
Rodger, N. A. M.: The Safeguard of the Sea – A Naval History of Britain, 660–1649. London, 1997
Rodger, N. A. M.: The Command of the Ocean – A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815. London, 2004
Rogers, Nicholas: The Press Gang – Naval Impressment and its Opponents in Georgian Britain. London, 2007
Ronald, D. A. B.: Young Nelsons – Boy Sailors During the Napoleonic Wars. Oxford, 2009
Stark, Suzanne J.: Female Tars – Women Aboard Ship in the Age of Sail. London, 1996
Sugden, John: Nelson – The Sword of Albion. London, 2012
Summerville, Christopher (ed.): Regency Recollections – Captain Gronow’s Guide to Life in London and Paris. Welwyn Garden City, 2006
Sutton, Jean: Lords of the East – The East India Company and its Ships, 1600–1874. London, 2000
Taylor, Stephen: The Caliban Shore – The Fate of the Grosvenor Castaways. London, 2004
Taylor, Stephen: Storm and Conquest – The Battle for the Indian Ocean, 1809. London, 2007
Taylor, Stephen: Commander – The Life and Exploits of Britain’s Greatest Frigate Captain. London, 2012
Thomas, Hugh: The Slave Trade – The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870. London, 2006
Thompson, E. P.: The Making of the English Working Class. London, 1980
Thursfield, H. G. (ed.): Five Naval Journals, 1789–1817. Navy Records Society, 1951
Toll, Ian: Six Frigates – The Epic History of the Founding of the US Navy. New York, 2006
Uglow, Jenny: In These Times – Living in Britain Through Napoleon’s Wars. London, 2014
Urban, Mark: Rifles – Six Years with Wellington’s Legendary Sharpshooters. London, 2003
Urquhart, Thomas: Letters on the Evils of Impressment. London, 1816
Vale, Brian: A Frigate of King George. London, 2001
Vickers, Daniel: Young Men and the Sea – Yankee Seafarers in the Age of Sail. London, 2005
Walmsley, Robert: Peterloo – The Case Reopened. Manchester, 1986
Walvin, James: Black Ivory – A History of British Slavery. London, 1993
Walvin, James: An African’s Life – The Life and Times of Olaudah Equiano, 1745–1797. London, 2000
Wareham, Tom: Frigate Commander. London, 2004
Watt, Helen, and Hawkins, Anne (eds): Letters of Seamen in the Wars with France 1793–1815. Martlesham, Suffolk, 2016
Williams, Glyn: The Prize of All the Oceans – The Triumph and Tragedy of Anson’s Voyage Around the World. London, 2000
Willis, Sam: The Fighting Temeraire. London, 2009
Wilson, Ben: Empire of the Deep – The Rise and Fall of the British Navy. London, 2013
Woodman, Richard: The Sea Warriors – Fighting Captains and Frigate Warfare in the Age of Nelson. London, 2001
Woodman, Richard: Neptune’s Trident – A History of the British Merchant Navy, 1500–1807. Stroud, 2008
ARTICLES AND THESES
Brown, Anthony: The Nore Mutiny – Sedition or Ships’ Biscuit? A Reappraisal, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 92:1, 2006
Davey, James: Singing for the Nation: Naval Recruitment and the Language of Patriotism in Eighteenth-Century Britain, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 103:1, 2017
Dixon, Conrad: Seamen’s Sixpences, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 70:4, 1984
Dixon, Conrad: To Walk the Quarterdeck – The Naval Career of David Ewan Bartholomew, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 79:1, 1993
Doorne, Christopher: Mutiny and Sedition in the Home Commands of the Royal Navy, 1793–1803. PhD thesis, University of London, 1998 (online)
Foy, Charles: ‘Unkle Sommerset’s Freedom’: Liberty in England for Black Sailors, in Journal for Maritime Research, May 2011
Hattendorf, John B.: The Naval War of 1812 in International Perspective, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 99:1, 2013
Hattendorf, John B.: American Perceptions of the Royal Navy Since 1775, in International Journal of Naval History, July 2014
Hunt, William R.: Nautical Autobiography in the Age of Sail, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 57:2, 1971
Jones, Stephen: Blood Red Roses, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 58:4, 1972
Land, Isaac: New Scholarship on the Press Gang (Download from Port Towns & Urban Cultures website)
McCord, Norman: The Seamen’s Strike of 1815 in North-East England, in The New Economic History Review, 21:1, 1968
McCord, Norman: The Government of Tyneside, 1800–1850. Cambridge University Press, 1970
Macleod, Norman: History of the Royal Hospital School, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 35:3, 1949
Maxworthy, Christopher: British Whalers, Merchants and Smugglers on the Pacific Coast of South America, 1783–1810 (Download from Derreteros de la Mar del Sur)
May, W. E.: The Mutiny of the Chesterfield, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 47:3, 1961
Taylor, R.: Manning the Royal Navy, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 44:4, 1958
Tibbles, Anthony: Born Under an Unlucky Planet, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 99:3, 2013
Vale, Brian: The Post Office, The Admiralty and Letters to Sailors in the Napoleonic Wars, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 105:2, 2019
Watt, James: The Health of Seamen in Anti-Slavery Squadrons, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 88:1, 2002
Wilcox, Martin: The Poor Decayed Seamen of Greenwich Hospital, in The International Journal of Maritime History, June 2013
Williams, Glyndwr: Seamen and Philosophers in the South Seas, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 65:1, 1979
Willis, Sam: The High Life: Topmen in the Eighteenth-Century Navy, in The Mariner’s Mirror, 90:2, 2004