Lecture dates

Download the full Autumn Programme

The King’s Maritime History Seminars for 2021-22 began with four, fully-online events in the autumn term with the aim of returning to face-to-face meetings from January 2022 whilst maintaining some form of online presence. We looked forward to welcoming you back online for our usual experience of maritime and naval historical discussion and debate.

Lecture dates

Download the full Spring Programme here

21 October 2021 Recruiting a naval reserve: the Royal Naval Coast Volunteers in Britain and Ireland, 1854–56 
Paul Huddie, University College Dublin

The King’s Maritime History Seminars re-started with fully-online events from the autumn term, 2020 onwards. We welcomed people via Zoom from the safety of wherever they were to the usual experience of rewarding papers and open discussion on maritime and naval history.

8 October 2020 Back Pocket Cruisers: the Royal Navy’s Tribal, Battle, and Daring Classes, the Genesis of the Modern Destroyer
Dr Alexander Clarke, Kingston University & ‘Naval History Live’

5 November 2020 The Queen’s Maritime Palace: the Monarchy and Naval Diplomacy at Osborne House, c. 1845-1890
Dr Lee Butcher, English Heritage & King’s College London

3 December 2020 The Frantic Atlantic: Ocean Liners in the Interwar Literary Imagination
Prof. Faye Hammill, University of Glasgow

21 January 2021 ‘The law is open on both sides’: Great Britain and Sweden’s Interpretation of the Law of Nations in the East India Trade in the 1730s

Christin Simons, University of St Andrews

4 February 2021 'Historical Sections' and 'Battle Studies’: the British Influence Upon American Visions of 'Sea Power' and History

David Kohnen, Hattendorf Historical Center, US Naval War College

18 February 2021 The Blockade Legend: the Limitations on the British Empire's Blockade of Germany, 1914-1917

Eric Grove, Associate Fellow Institute for Strategic Studies

 4 March 2021 Trafalgar. Temeraire. The Men.

Emma Cooper, Independent Researcher

22 April 2021

Commerce and Charters, Conflict and Contraband: the Norwegian Steamship Tungus and the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905

Roger Dence, King’s College London

6 May 2021 

The Wrens and the Wireless War in World War II 

Peter Hore, FRHS CMIL 

Download the King's Seminars term 1 (Autumn) programme 

Download the King's Seminar term 2 (Spring) programme

Download the 2018-19 programme 

18 October 2018 Doing the Work of the Imperial Government”: The Royal Navy and the Suppression of Chinese Piracy in the Nineteenth Century
Nathan Kwan, King’s College London

1 November 2018 Facing the “Vortex of Militarism”: Gladstone, the Liberals and the Politics of Naval Expansion, 1888-94
Peter Keeling, University of Kent

15 November 2018 “A Drop in the Ocean?”: Insurance, Maritime Law and the French State, 1668-c.1700
Lewis Wade, University of Exeter

29 November 2018 The Abolition of the Admiralty and the Handover of Strategic Maritime Doctrine to the USA, 1945-1964
James W.E. Smith, King’s College London

13 December 2018 Proctor Memorial Lecture, : Top Predators: Privateering, Trawling and Marine Environments
David J. Starkey, University of Hull

10 January 2019 From Afghanistan to the Arctic: British Maritime Strategy in the Twenty-First Century
James Bosbotinis, J.B. Associates

24 January 2019 Managing Risk in England’s Earliest Transatlantic Enterprises: the Newfoundland Fisheries, 1550-1630
Josh Ivinson, University of Cambridge

7 February 2019 From Whence Came the Royal Navy Fleet of 1939?
Alexander Clarke, Kingston University

21 February 2019 “Cast your bread upon the waters…”: The Rev. John Cynddylan Jones and the Ships of Evan Thomas, Radcliffe & Co., Cardiff
David Jenkins, National Museum of Wales

7 March 2019 Empire of the Rising Sun and Empire of the Owl: A Comparative Approach to Sea Power as Cultural Identity in Imperial Japan (1868-1941) and 5th Century BCE Athens
Kunika Kakuta, King’s College London

25 April 2019 Protecting the Mediterranean: Ottoman Responses to Maritime Violence in the Eighteenth Century
Michael Talbot, University of Greenwich

9 May 2019 The Air Debate: Naval Ideas of Air Power in the Inter-War Period
Neil Datson, Independent Scholar

23 May 2019 “False Shipwreck’d Sailors”: Shipwreck Imposters and Charity in Nineteenth-Century England
Cathryn Pearce, University of Portsmouth

Download 2017-18 programme

12 October 2017, Project Undaunted – exciting research opportunities, interesting discoveries
Barbara Jones, Lloyd’s Register

26 October 2017, Challenging the Atlantic: Brunel's first steam ship, Great Western
Helen Doe, University of Exeter

9 November 2017, Sea of Contradictions: Black seafarers in the Royal Navy
S.I. Martin, Writer and Researcher

23 November 2017 Proctor Memorial Lecture, Sailing around Belligerents' Restrictions: American Shipping to Bordeaux during the French Wars (1793-1815) Silvia Marzagalli, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis

7 December 2017, 'Our Peace was not the Action of Children': Restoration England and Ottoman Algiers, 1660-1688 (title to be confirmed)
Steve Garnett, University of Canterbury

18 January 2018, Baltic Brigs and Guernsey Sloops: Southampton’s Shipping Patterns in the 1770s
Maria Newbery, University of Southampton

1 February 2018, Decolonisation from the Seas: Mutiny in the Royal Indian Navy
Naina Manjrekar, SOAS

15 February 2018, The Royal Navy's First War Staff Course
Simon Harley, Independent Researcher

1 March 2018, The Curious Case of the ‘Steam Yacht’ Caroline: An Incident from the Russo-Japanese War in British Waters
Roger Dence, King’s College London

15 March 2018, The Black Sea war of 1914-17 through British eyes
Toby Ewin, King’s College London

26 April 2018, Life before Death: the 1963 decision to build the aircraft carrier CVA01
Tim Benbow, King’s College London

10 May 2018, Pageantry and Representation in the late-Henrician Navy: The Battle of the Solent and Admiral Claude d’Annebault’s Visit to London
Benjamin Redding, University of Warwick

24 May 2018, ‘An Incomparable Influence Upon Every Shore’: Conceptions of Naval Power and World Order on the Eve of the Great War
Louis M. Halewood, University of Oxford

Download 2016-17 programme

6 October 2016, Rescuing Gallipoli: Sir Julian Corbett's official history and the future of maritime strategy
Andrew Lambert, King's College London

20 October 2016, Declining Effectiveness: the RNAS and the Defence of Halifax, Nova Scotia, from German Submarines in the First World War
Ian F. S. Stafford, Constitutional Lawyer, MA Imperial History

3 November 2016, Gunfire from a Distant Shore: Franco’s Navy in Spain’s Civil War Extends Operations against Republican Shipping into the North Sea
Nick Coni, former Consultant Physician, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge

26 January 2017, Come into Port Gently: Comparative North Atlantic Paradigms in Port History
Lewis R. Fischer, Memorial University, Newfoundland

9 February 2017, The Historiography of Force Z: Understanding the Royal Navy's Greatest Defeat of the Second World War
Andy Boyd, University of Buckingham

23 February 2017, The Manila Galleon, 1565-1815
Ian Wilkinson, Independent Researcher

9 March 2017, The Manganese Trade from Cornwall and Industrial Activity in Liverpool in the Early Nineteenth Century
Peter Skidmore, Independent Researcher

27 April 2017, Shipbuilding: Information and Process
Roy Metcalfe, World Ship Society Library and Archive, Chatham Dockyard

11 May 2017, A Most Disagreeable Problem: The Royal Navy and Kriegsmarine Aircraft Carriers Lloyd’s Registers
Marcus Faulkner, King's College London

25 May 2017, The Cutting Out of the French Corvette La Chevrette during the Napoleonic Wars
Sim Comfort, Independent Researcher

Download 2015-16 programme 

8 October 2015, Inadequate Convoy & ASW: own goals that would come back to haunt the IJN in the Pacific War
Malcolm Murfett, King’s College London

22 October 2015, Ideology and Early Modern Naval Power
Gijs Rommelse, Haarlemmermeer Lyceum, Hoofddorp

5 November 2015, Maritime Relief: Transnational Charities for British Prisoners of War in Napoleonic France
Elodie Duché, York St John University

3 December 2015, From Clyde to Korea: British Assistance in the Establishment of the World's Largest Shipyard
Stig Tenold, The Norwegian School of Economics

7 January 2016, Privateers, High Courts, and Ministers: Britain's Failure to Maintain Spanish Neutrality in the Seven Years War
Anna Brinkman, King’s College London

21 January 2016, Steam Coaster Robin: Preservation Triumph or Tragedy?
Roy Fenton, Independent Researcher and Partner in ‘Ships in Focus Publications’

4 February 2016, Hilarious Seasickness: Comic Postcards' Take on Travel's Costs, 1900-1950
Jo Stanley, Author and Consultant

18 February 2016, Naval Diplomacy: Classic and Modern Theory Revisited
Jerker Widén, Swedish Defence University

3 March 2016, The Salvaging of the ex-German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow (1924-1939)
Ian Taylor, Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Fellow of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects

28 April 2016, U.K. Shipping during the Industrial Revolution: Newly Accessible Data from Lloyd’s Registers 
Peter Solar, Vesalius College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

12 May 2016, Maritime Employment During the First Globalization: the Mediterranean Perspective
Maria Fusaro, University of Exeter

26 May 2016, The Challenge of Empire: The Strategy and Tactics of the Spanish Navy, 1748-1783
Catherine Scheybeler, King’s College London

Download 2014-15 programme

9 October 2014, Did Richard the Lionheart Found the Royal Navy? The crown and sea defence in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries
Susan P. Rose, Roehampton University

23 October 2014, Maritime Piracy: A Twentieth-Century Re-Genesis? 
Robert McCabe, National University of Ireland, Maynooth

6 November 2014, Antarctic Encounter: the Palmer-Bellingshausen Meeting, 1821
Rip Bulkeley, Independent Researcher

4 December 2014, English Her itage C20 Characterisation Study: Naval Dockyards Devonport and Portsmouth – Just in Time?
Ann Coats, University of Portsmouth

8 January 2015, Tramps Ocean and Coastal: what we know and what we don’t know
Roy Fenton, Independent Researcher and Partner in ‘Ships in Focus Publications’

22 January 2015, Organising Supply: The political economy of naval armaments manufacture, 1925-41
Christopher Miller, University of Glasgow and Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen

5 February 2015, Devonport Dockyard and the First World War
Michael Duffy, University of Exeter

19 February 2015, A Catastrophic Blunder: the Japanese failure to adopt convoy in its own waters in WWII
Malcom Murfett, National University of Singapore

5 March 2015, The British Shipbuilding Industry, Warship Exports and the Ministry of Defence in the 1970s: a case study of the Type 24 frigate
Ed Hampshire, The Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst

30 April 2015, La Decima (XMAS): the Italian Commando Frogman Unit in the Adriatic and their dispersion after WWII
Manuel Moreno Minuto, Italian Navy

14 May 2015, 1863/1864: Some British and Allied Naval Operations in Japanese Waters
Jonathan Parkinson, Independent Researcher

28 May 2015, ‘Goods to Newcastle’: An Unexplored Coastal Shipping Network, 1800-1840
Adrian Osler, Independent Maritime Historian

Changing Perspectives: Positioning the Sea in Recent German Historiography

Presenter: Ruth Schilling, DSM German Maritime Museum, Leibniz Institute for Maritime History

News Item

Please note that no Proctor Lectures were held in 2020 or 2021.

The Spritsail Revolution. Government Interference and the Introduction of New Technology at Sea in the Sixteenth Century

Louis Sicking, University of Leiden

Watch lecture here

Top Predators: Privateering, Trawling and Marine Environments

David J. Starkey, University of Hull

Sailing around Belligerents' Restrictions: American Shipping to Bordeaux during the French Wars (1793-1815)

Silvia Marzagalli, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis

The Armada Portrait: Manifesto for a Maritime Empire?

Christine Riding, National Maritime Museum

Collaboration Between Two Maritime Nations? Britain and The Netherlands in the Nineteenth Century

Joost Schokkenbroek, National Maritime Museum and VU University Amsterdam

Taking the War to Napoleon: Strategy, Merchant Shipping, and Private-Sector Warship Building, 1803-1815

Professor Roger Knight, University of Greenwich

Boom, collapse and life after near-death: Norwegian shipping after 1960

Stig Tenhold, The Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen

Breaching neutrality: British privateering and Swedish prizes, 1650-1713

Professor Steve Murdoch, University of St Andrews

Mr Onassis and game theory

Professor Gelina Harlaftis, Ionian University, Corfu

The naval arms race and the great naval Armageddon, 1750-1815

Dr Michael Duffy, University of Exeter

German shipping companies during the ‘great depression’, 1929-1934

Dr Lars U Scholl, Director of the German Maritime Museum and Professor of Maritime History at the University of Bremen

The cartographic struggle for the Arctic passages, 1550-1650

Dr Sarah Tyacke CB, Royal Holloway, University of London

Research in the history of navigation: its role in maritime history

Dr Willem F J Mörzer Bruyns, Nederlands Scheepvartmuseum, Amsterdam (ret.)

Humankind and the sea: the changing relationship since the late eighteenth century

Dr David M Williams, University of Leicester