King's Maritime History Seminars 2024-25
Posted: Friday 27th September 2024
The King’s Seminars are an annual set of lectures organised by the BCMH, which run from September to May. They are open to the public and are normally held at King’s College London (and broadcast live via Zoom). The Kings Seminars are a range of lectures by invited speakers. There are usually two each month during term time.
The series is organised by Dr Alan James, and are supported by the Society for Nautical Research and the ‘Laughton Naval History Unit’ and ‘Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War’ at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.
Seminar Series, 2024-25
The King’s Maritime History Seminars for 2023-24 will continue as hybrid events which means that they may be attended in person or online (with the exception of the entirely online event on 21 March).
26 September 2024 - Supremacy at Sea: Task Force 58 and the Central Pacific Victory
Evan Mawdsley, University of Glasgow
10 October 2024 - Excellent Planning and Execution" - The Allied Navies and Victory in Normandy, 1944
Nick Hewitt, National Museum of the Royal Navy
24 October 2024 - A History of Ship Launches and their Ceremonies
George Hodgkinson, Independent Researcher
7 November 2024 - ‘The worst journey in the world’ – HMS Belfast and the Arctic Convoys
Robert Rumble, Imperial War Museums
21 November 2024 - ‘Searching for Billy Waters: Or, Black Sailors in the Regency Navy'
Mary L. Shannon, University of Roehampton
12 December 2024 - The Proctor Memorial Lecture * - The Devil’s highway: urban anxieties and subaltern cultures in London’s sailortown, c.1850-1900
Brad Beaven, University of Portsmouth
9 January 2025 - Nelson’s Pathfinders: Hydrography and the Triumph of British Sea Power 1793-1823
Captain Michael Barritt, Royal Navy
23 January 2025 - Staying afloat – managing mission creep during the Royal Navy’s intervention in the Baltic, 1918-1919
Matthew Heaslip, University of Portsmouth
6 February 2025 - The RNLI at Dunkirk and the Little Ships Myth
Helen Doe, University of Exeter and Chair of BCMH
20 February 2025 - ‘In the name of God’, the Journal of the voyage made to the Levant by three warships under the command of John Acton in the years 1750-51
Bruno Cianci, University of Genoa & Rahmi M Koç Museum (Istanbul)
6 March 2025 - ‘Failing to prepare for the unexpected’: British defence policy in the late Cold War and the Royal Navy
Edward Hampshire, Naval Historical Branch MOD
24 April 2025 - Labour, Legend, and Living History: Clyde ‘puffers’, 1857-2024
Roy Fenton, Independent Researcher and Trustee of BCMH
8 May 2025 - Title TBC
Rachael Utting, Isles of Scilly Museum
22 May 2025 - Reimagining the Bombay Grab: Fighting and trading across the Indian Ocean
Chris Ellmers, Docklands History Group
