Search Results

This chapter notes the difficulties in comprehending the historical development of labour markets in purely neo-classical terms and questions the enrolment and wage procedures of the Finnish maritime labour markets. It also discusses the integration inside the network of connected local maritime labour markets in the Age of Sail and describes the differences between commodity and labour markets. The chapter concludes with a reference to the aftermath of the First World War, and foregrounds the idea of a less international maritime labour market.

A Thanksgiving Day pageant at Plymouth Harbor, Massachusetts, in 1970 revealed the extent to which modern Americans have forgotten an important chapter of their early past. Though profoundly significant in the political, economic, and cultural development of both Native and colonial societies in the Northeast, the history of Wabanaki sea power has been intentionally and inadvertently overlooked by myriad peoples. New Englanders in the era of the American Revolution ignored their history of victimhood at the hands of Indians and their dependency on the British Empire to mitigate it. The story has since been buried deeper by popular and academic writing informed by historical assumptions about American Indians, the Atlantic world, and piracy.

This section is a brief introduction to the remainder of the journal, outlining how mass migration became a big business during the transition from sail to steam technology between 1870 and 1914. It also states that records from the Holland-America Line form the majority of the sources for the subsequent chapters.

This chapter provides a study of British seamen in the “age of sail” and analyses how Britain became the undisputed maritime world power in both mercantile and naval terms. It looks at the country’s expansion of maritime activity in the light of the uniqueness of Britain’s position as an island with a lengthy coastline and ports facing in more than one direction, and questions the reliability and accessibility of data concerning the mercantile maritime.

This final chapter is divided into three sections. The first concerns the skills of maritime labourers; the second addresses the alleged shortages of seamen; and the third is the contemporary perception of and responses to these concerns. Williams examines public concerns over perceived lack of maritime employment in relation to nostalgia, and a pervasive, romanticised view of sailing and sailing culture. Williams finds, and concludes, that nostalgia for traditional sailing, yearning for a glorified British Empire, and an emotional public mindset, made little impression on the economic progress made during the age of steam, expansion, and technological development.

This essay concerns the use of advance notes to recruit seamen for long distance voyages during the age of sail, how it both shaped market behaviour and came under scrutiny by maritime reformers of the latter half of the century. Williams examines the exploitation of seamen that accompanied tbhe practice, the inability of owners to recruit seamen without the advance note, and details the efforts of reformers to abolish the notes - which succeeded in 1881 but was largely ignored by seamen and shipowners alike, and so advance notes were re-legalised in 1889. Williams then charts the true disappearance of the advance note, as they became obsolete once the age of sail shifted into the age of steam and the market shifted to accommodate new technology, fundamentally altering the role of the seafarer.

This chapter is a study of maritime trade during the ‘mercantilism’ period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It explores the way oceans functioned as highways for ships, people, and commodities, and briefly introduces the Newfoundland fish trade in the eighteenth century - the framework through which the rest of the journal approaches the subject of maritime trade. It offers an overview of the developments in commodity trade in the period, primarily in the Atlantic community; the environment factors such as wind or current patterns that plagued sailing vessels; the risks inherent to ocean voyages during the period; the way family and kinship influenced maritime commerce; the types of trade undertaken; the safeguarding of investments; and the increase in both the military and government presence in maritime trade affairs. It concludes that in order to fully understand the importance of oceanic highways the intricacies of the land-sea relationship must be considered in detail.