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Winston Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty in October 1911. One of the first problems he sought to tackle was how to protect British trade from the threat posed by Germany's armed liners. His solution was to arm selected cargo ships. There were many obstacles. Defensively armed merchant ships (DAMS) represented a major reversal of British policy, which for the previous half century had encouraged the disarmament of merchantmen. There was also some anxiety that in wartime the Germans would hang the crews of such vessels as pirates if they were captured. Finally, it required a major revision of the system of naval training to ensure that the crews of all DAMS contained naval reservists capable of using the installed weaponry. Yet, despite requiring considerable time and energy to implement, numerous DAMS were available when war broke out.

Often undervalued in the existing historiography of the Second World War, the dominions provided assistance to the UK in many ways that proved fundamental to British strategy. This chapter seeks to demonstrate how important this was in one such area—bolstering British maritime power. The most crucial support was provided by Canada in the North Atlantic. Canada helped maintain the link between North America and the UK, which was essential to both British survival and the capacity to maintain offensives. More surprisingly, the Union of South Africa had a vital role to fulfill on the Cape Route once the Mediterranean was effectively closed to Allied shipping. The island dominions of Australia and New Zealand could do little more than fall in line with Allied strategy, since the direction of the war to some extent marginalized the importance of their role in the British maritime effort. In the long attritional war at sea, the dominions proved foundational in their importance to British maritime power. This effort kept the Commonwealth connected during one of the most challenging phases of its existence.

Official relations between the United States and metropolitan France were no more than a marginal factor in bringing matters to crisis point. The real key has to be looked for in the French West Indies. There, conditions of social upheaval and revolution, together with invasion by British military forces, had created a dynamic of its own. The consequences for American merchant shipping, as has already been seen, were little short of catastrophic. If there were any single undertaking by the American government in the closing years of the 18th century that could be rated as something close to a full practical success it was that of bringing the U.S. navy into being and the first Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Stoddert. The officer who would emerge as a figure of national prominence during the Quasi-War, Thomas Truxtun, had commanded privateers but had never held a naval commission at all.

Upon learning of Germany's all-out submarine warfare campaign, Wilson met with his cabinet and, in the afternoon of February 3, announced during a joint session in Congress that the US had been forced to sever its diplomatic ties with Germany. While the Senate adopted a resolution backing the president, the House introduced a resolution calling for a referendum on the country's entry into the war. Throughout February, the Central Powers attacked 128 ships, virtually paralyzing foreign trade. Wilson, however, continued to remain cautious and some even perceived him to be conciliatory toward Germany. It wasn't until Wilson learned of Germany's plan to persuade Mexico to wage a war against the US that the president lost all faith in the German government. On February 26, Wilson spoke before a joint session of Congress to request authority to arm merchant ships. Although a few senators remained opposed to the armed-ship bill, Wilson felt he had no choice and decided to go ahead and order the arming of American ships and authorize them to shoot at any submarine that acted suspiciously. Germany, however, remained largely undeterred despite Wilson's move.

This chapter argues that Britain's success in the Seven Years' War was due to the kingdom's ability to use its merchant shipping to project military power overseas. It explains that Britain relied on its Navy Board, a subordinate department of the British Admiralty, to administer ‘the Civil Economy of the Navy’ during the Seven Years' War. It adds that the board chartered merchant ships to provide transport for troops, horses, and supplies, needed by the British army and navy to conduct military operations overseas.

This chapter by Kevin Smith examines Britain's survival in the Second World War and how it depended upon maintaining its lines of maritime communications for overseas supplies. Obsession with anti-submarine warfare obscures examination of complementary British managerial efforts to maximize merchant shipping capacity – especially through the key task of rapid, thorough repair of damaged cargo vessels. An examination of the comparative cost to shipping capacity imposed by submarine attacks and by repair delays illustrates the need to integrate our analysis of the managerial and martial aspects of maritime warfare by suggesting that even after acknowledging the permanent loss of sunken ships, the much larger volume of ships immobilized by reason of repair imposed a comparable reduction in cargo capacity. Consequently, Britain's dependence upon American allocations of newly-built cargo vessels was exacerbated. One especially important impediment to repairing ships (and a legacy of the Great Depression) was bitter class conflict between shipyard workers and shipbuilders, especially the Admiralty Controller of Merchant Shipbuilding and Repair – as well as between that Controller and the Minister of Labour. This chapter suggests new avenues toward situating maritime warfare in a broader context.

One of the major challenges that Wilson faced in negotiating a peace agreement was Britain's arming of merchant ships. Although the practice was allowed under international law, it was Germany's contention that its submarines could not safely surface and warn armed merchantmen before sinking them. When the US threatened Germany with a suspension of diplomatic relations, Germany responded with a promise to observe the rules of cruiser warfare, including provision for the passenger and crew of unresisting merchant vessels. Meanwhile, American support for the British dipped after the Easter Rebellion in Dublin and the Allied seizures of American mail. By mid-May, Wilson was becoming increasingly frustrated with Britain's continued refusal to accept American intervention. When the British released a “blacklist” of some 85 American and 350 Latin American firms suspected of trading with the Central Powers, Americans were livid. In response, US legislators worked to create a government-owned and -operated merchant fleet and, in September, Wilson signed into law a bill that empowered the president to deny discriminatory nations access to American ports. Despite these frustrations with the British, the US recognized that America's trade with the Allies had become highly lucrative.

This chapter argues that all military campaigns of the British during the Seven Years' War were largely dependent on merchant shipping. It adds that all amphibious assaults conducted by the British during the Seven Years' War were all made possible due to the logistical support of the transports, ordinance ships, and victuallers. It concludes by arguing that merchant shipping to transport soldiers, horses, munitions, and military equipment, together were one of the most important factors in securing victory for the British during the Seven Years' War.

Strachan spent two years as a servant of the East India Company during which the merchants were bitterly divided due to their lack of success in silk trading. This period saw the first of his recurring attacks of malaria. By contrasting accounts in the company archives with Della Valle’s journal, the chapter describes how unfounded accusations of murder against Strachan brought about his dismissal for incompetence as a doctor. Strachan spent months teaching the Carmelite friars Arabic and saving for onward travel to India but was secretly reemployed by the governor of the EIC in Iran, Edward Monnox, to act as interpreter and company representative during the negotiations with Shah Abbas for EIC naval involvement in the Iranian army’s capture of Hormuz in 1622. In this way he became intimate with the Shah’s court.

This chapter examines government regulation in the British shipping industry in relation to the coastal sector. It explores the lack of government presence in the wider shipping industry in comparison to the railway sector, then deconstructs their shipping presence, where it becomes apparent that the majority of government inquiry and legislation in shipping pertained to the coastal sector. By studying Parliamentary acts, the Board of Trade, and governmental activity, it demonstrates that the government strived to pioneer new technology and keep the shipping industry active. It concludes that enquiries and legislation faced by the industry were the result of wrecks, explosions, and collisions - events which affected the coastal sector more keenly than the deep-water sector.

This chapter focuses on the success and demise of the Spanish shipping firm, The Compañía Marítima Del Nervion, and explores its evolution across almost a century. The essay discusses the business of merchant shipping within a changing technological, institutional and market environment.

This chapter analyses the mid-nineteenth century attempts to improve the working conditions of merchant seamen in Britain, by focussing on the actions of the Society for Improving the Condition of Merchant Seamen - an extra-parliamentary committee founded to push for governmental reform. Williams notes that the committee was comprised of MPs, naval officers, medical men, and shipmasters, but no common seamen whatsoever. He suggests the society grew out of primarily middle-class humanitarian interests. The society published reports into health, accommodation, wages, and protection of life. Williams declares that their audience was the general public, those who value business freedom but are troubled by humanitarian concerns. He concludes by stating the Society was both instrumental and symptomatic in the shift in consciousness from improving maritime discipline, to improving maritime welfare.

This chapter surveys the trends and topics in literature surrounding Canadian naval history published in the past twenty years. Topics explored in the essay are merchant shipping; shipping companies; shipbuilding; ports; fishing; maritime labour; and naval history.

This chapter goes back to the dark days of 1941 when the fates of England—and, by extension, of the United States—hung in the balance. Combining the personal insights on President Franklin D. Roosevelt's diplomacy, found in works such as Warren Kimball's The Juggler and in the compelling narrative on the approach of war best seen in Waldo Heinrichs' Threshold of War, the chapter focuses on the critical issue of the U.S. Navy's convoying of merchant ships across the Atlantic during 1941. It examines how lukewarm public opinion, Congressional opposition, incomplete rearmament, and the pressing needs of other theaters, led Roosevelt to dissemble and delay rather than address the convoy question. This study offers a particularly penetrating re-examination of Roosevelt's legacy of bipartisanship, his mishandling of isolationists in 1941, and his lack of candor toward Congress and the public.

This book, although not about pirates, begins with the topic of pirates. In April 2009, most Americans were startled to learn that a U.S. flagged merchant ship, the Maersk Alabama, had been attacked by Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa and equally relieved when the destroyer USS Bainbridge, which happened to be patrolling in the area, arrived to rescue the captain and literally blow up his captors. A sporadic and generally marginal phenomenon across two centuries, the incidence of oceanic piracy has picked up in recent years due to the juncture of rising Asian exports—especially for transshipment through the Suez Canal and the Molucca Straits—and the number of “failed states” around the Indian Ocean.

Joseph Conrad promoted precision as a principle of quality in literary writing, and an epitome of sailorly ethics and good practice. But he simultaneously insisted that haziness and indeterminacy were indispensable to his novels. Accommodating this apparent contradiction, this chapter argues that precision does not equate to a denial of vagueness. Instead, reading Conrad shows that precision as an epistemological practice and fictional method must accommodate inaccuracy, mostly in its mediations between particularity and abstraction. The split quality of precision relates to the sea by way of shifts in the practice and regulation of shipping, which accelerated in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The maritime history of Conrad’s precision suggests an underexplored vector for the widely acknowledged modernist aesthetics of exactitude, usually allied to mechanization. Precision, for Conrad, is a way of thinking and writing in intimacy with error.