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The Social History of English Seamen, 1485-1649

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An overview of a wide range of aspects of maritime social history in the Tudor and early Stuart period. Traditionally, the history of English maritime adventures has focused on the great sea captains and swashbucklers....
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  • 20 December 2011
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An overview of a wide range of aspects of maritime social history in the Tudor and early Stuart period.

Traditionally, the history of English maritime adventures has focused on the great sea captains and swashbucklers. However, over the past few decades, social historians have begun to examine the less well-known seafarers who wereon the dangerous voyages of commerce, exploration, privateering and piracy, as well as naval campaigns.
This book brings together some of their findings. There is no comparable work that provides such an overview of our knowledge of English seamen during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the tumultuous world in which they lived.
Subjects covered include trade, piracy, wives, widows and the wider maritime community, health and medicine at sea, religion and shipboard culture, how Tudor and Stuart ships were manned and provisioned, and what has been learned from the important wreck the Mary Rose.

CHERYL A. FURY is Professor of History at the University of New Brunswick, and on the editorial board of Northern Mariner [the Canadian journal of maritime history].
Contributors: J.D. ALSOP, JOHN APPLEBY, CHERYL A. FURY, GEOFFREY HUDSON, DAVID LOADES, VINCENT PATARINO JR, ANN STIRLAND.
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Price: $170.00
Pages: 360
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Imprint: Boydell Press
Publication Date: 20 December 2011
Trim Size: 9.21 X 6.14 in
ISBN: 9781843836896
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / General, European history, HISTORY / Social History, HISTORY / Modern / General, Social and cultural history
REVIEWS Icon
The multi-faceted approach of the work is its greatest strength.

A very good addition to Boydell & Brewer's growing maritime and naval catalogue, and...will prove to be an effective teaching tool.

A composite but detailed and arresting picture of the lives of English seamen in Elizabethan and Jacobean times.

Possibly no comparable book has provided such an overview of the lives of English sailors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. [...] This book will be enjoyed by readers with an interest in both sociological history and maritime studies, and could act as a maritime researcher's template for how to present a well-reasoned study of the social history of English seamen at any period.

Provides an expansive and much needed enquiry into the experience of English seamen in the Tudor-Stuart period. [...] This collection does a remarkable job of rescuing the life and customs of Jack Tarr in the Early Modern Age from obscurity.

This volume is an important contribution to maritime studies, not just because it focuses on a less studied period in maritime history, but also because it features the average seamen and highlights what we've learned in spite of the limited resources.

Contains a lot of stimulating new work. [It] achieves its aim of summarising and assessing the current state of knowledge, and as such it is a valuable introduction to the subject. Its value to historians is obvious, but archaeologists also need to appreciate this kind of evidence.
Introduction -
The English Maritime Community, 1500-1650 - David Loades
The Work of G.V. Scammell -
The Men of the Mary Rose - Ann Stirland
Tudor Merchant Seafarers in the Early Guinea Trade - J.D. Alsop
The Elizabethan Maritime Community -
The Religious Shipboard Culture of Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century English Sailors - Vincent Patarino
Health and Health Care at Sea - J.D. Alsop and
The Relief of English Disabled Ex-Sailors, c. 1590-1680 - Geoffrey Hudson
Seamen's Wives and Widows -
Jacobean Piracy: English Maritime Depredation in Transition, 1603-1625 -
Conclusion -