In this delightfully modern episode of Travels Through Time we are setting sail for an adventure on the high seas.

Our guest is David Bosco, author of The Poseidon Project, The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans, in which he charts the efforts of international organisations to create consensus and establish a structure of globally recognised rules for the oceans.

In this episode David takes us back to 1982, a fraught year on the high seas when Britain was battling Argentina in the South Atlantic for control of the Falkland Islands and the waters around them. In the Arctic, a British adventurer had just completed the famous Northwest Passage. He did so just as disagreement between Canada and the United States over the legal status of the Passage became acute. Meanwhile, final preparations were underway for the signing of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. But there was a cloud over the celebrations—the world’s leading maritime power, the United States, had decided not to sign.

Click here to order David Bosco's book The Poseidon Project, The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans from an independent bookseller. 

Show Notes

Scene One: January 1, 1982, The North Pole. Sir Ranulph Fiennes and his wife Virginia Fiennes celebrated the New Year with the rest of their expedition at a snow-covered base camp. 

Scene Two: June 8, 1982, the South Atlantic Ocean, approximately 500 miles northeast of the Falkland Islands. An aircraft bombs the tanker Hercules during the war between Argentina and the United Kingdom for control of the Falklands. 

Scene Three: December 10, 1982: Rose Hall Hotel, Montego Bay, Jamaica. The site for the signing of the new United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. 

Memento: The signed treaty from the convention in Montego Bay. 

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: David Bosco

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Unseen Histories

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