The Mariner's Mirror Podcast

By The Society for Nautical Research and the Lloyds Register FoundationSociety & Culture Education History

The Mariner's Mirror Podcast episodes

May 24, 2022 The U-Boat War: 1939-1945
On 24 May 1945 the Supreme Commander of the German Navy, Admiral Karl Dönitz recorded the following words in his War Diary:

‘Wolf Pack operations against convoys in the North Atlantic, the main theatre of operations and at the same time the theatre in which air cover was strongest, were no longer possible. They could only be resumed if we succeeded in radically increasing the fighting power of the U-boats. That was the logical conclusion to which I came and I accordingly withdrew the boats from the North Atlantic. We had lost the Battle of the Atlantic.’

In this episode Dr Sam Willis speaks with U-boat historian Lawrence Paterson to find out how the U-boat shaped the global nature of the Second World War. The U-boat war was not confined to the Atlantic but fought in the Baltic, Mediterranean and in every other sea save for the Southern Ocean. It was a truly global conflict. Overstretched and undersupplied, it was this global nature of the U-boat role that ultimately doomed the campaign from the very start. Lawrence helps reset the mythology of the Battle of the Atlantic within the wider context of the war itself, analysing the chaotic German military and industrial mismanagement that occurred in all the theatres and hamstrung brilliant commanders and crews.
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40 min
May 19, 2022 The Feejee Mermaid
In this episode we continue looking at folklore, myths and legends relating to the sea by investigating the story of the Feejee Mermaid, an extraordinary tale of a 'real' mermaid that was discovered in Japan in 1822, purchased by a collector and displayed in London to the grotesque fascination of thousands of people. Dr Sam Willis speaks with Béatrice Laurent, Professor of Victorian Studies at the Université Bordeaux Montaigne in France. They discuss the reasons why people believe in mermaids in the nineteenth century and how the discovery of mermaids fitted in with religious and scientific thought at the time.
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28 min
May 18, 2022 Mermaids and Sirens
Folklore, myths and legends relating to the sea have existed for as long as humans have been travelling by sea. The alien nature of the marine environment, the almost inconceivable scale of the oceans, the power of the sea, and the extraordinary richness in the ocean’s biodiversity has led to the creation and development of the most fabulous legends.

And one of the most important of those legends concerns women and the sea – women in the form of mermaids and sirens – both subtly different creatures: the mermaid having the torso of a woman and the tail of fish; a siren being a creature that first appears in Greek mythology, who lured sailors to shipwreck and death with their enchanting voices. Their appearance was different and although written descriptions are few and far between, they are depicted in art as birds flying over the sea and ships, but with the heads of women.

Such a rich story is culturally rather complicated. To find out more Eirwen Abborley-Watton spoke with Cecilia Rose a PhD Student at the university of Exeter whose work focuses on mermaids and sirens as figures of indeterminate gender in the art and poetry of the late Victorian Era and how these figures may still be used as symbols for transgender and non-binary communities today.
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26 min
May 08, 2022 The Lusitania Disaster: Part 4 The Exhibition
Part 4 of our special min-series on the Lusitania disaster. Dr Sam Willis meets Lusitania historian Peter Kelly and together they explore some of their favourite items in the Lusitania exhibition at the Merseyside Maritime Museum. They discuss two different ships linked with the Lusitania story - the Falaba, a passenger ship of Liverpool's Elder Dempster line sunk by a German U-Boat off the southern coast of Ireland a matter of weeks before the Lusitania disaster; and the Carmania, a Cunard line Atlantic liner like the Lusitania. But unlike the Lusitania the Carmania was converted into an armed ship and went on to sink an armed German merchant cruiser in Bermuda. Sam and Peter also discuss Peter's project researching the biographies of all of those on board Lusitania on her last voyage and also the extraordinary satirical medallions made in Germany to commemorate the sinking.
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33 min
May 07, 2022 The Lusitania Disaster: Part 3 The Ship and the Sinking
Part 3 of our mini-series on the Lusitania tragedy when, in May 1915 the Cunard passenger liner Lusitania was torpedoed 16 miles off the coast of Ireland, leading the deaths of over 1100 men, women and children. This episode looks at the general history of the ship, the reasons behind her construction, and the reasons behind her destruction. The episode puts the Lusitania sinking in the context of early twentieth century shipbuilding and of the First World War. To find out more Dr Sam Willis travelled to Liverpool on the day of the Lusitania memorial service, held on Albert dock where one of the Lusitania's propellers survives, and spoke with Peter Kelly, a historian researching the biographies of every single passenger on board the ship on her fateful voyage.
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29 min
May 07, 2022 The Lusitania Disaster: Part 2 The Eyewitness Accounts
This is the second episode in our Lusitania Disaster Special in which we explore the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-Boat in May 1915, which ended in the death of over 1900 people. In this episode we hear three fascinating eyewitness accounts: The 18 year-old lookout Leslie Morton describes how he lost his brother when the torpedo struck, scrambled for his life and ended up trawling the morgues in Queenstown for his brother's corpse; we hear from Grace French, a 24 year-old dressmaker from Scotland making her way back home who was taking the air with a young man she had taken a shine to when the torpedo tore her future apart; and the English nurse Alice Lines, travelling with her American employers to look after their children. When the torpedo struck Alice found herself as far away from safety as possible - she was inside, downstairs, with a five year old and a seven year old she had to save as well as herself.
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19 min
May 07, 2022 The Lusitania Disaster: Part 1 An Introduction to the Eyewitness Accounts
This episode forms part of our mini series on the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 - that terrible event when the enormous Cunard passenger liner was sunk off the coast of Ireland by a German U-Boat killing 1193 people. To find out more Dr Sam Willis speaks with Anthony Richards from London's Imperial War Museum. Anthony is an expert on eyewitness testimony and on the sinking of the Lusitania. They discuss the exciting purchase at auction by the Imperial War Museum of numerous accounts of the disaster, and what they can tell us about this defining moment in the First World War, and in the history of all disasters at sea.
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27 min
April 30, 2022 Ultimate Ship Models 2: The Great Eastern
The second of a new mini-series on ship models. Dr Sam Willis explores the extraordinary model of the SS Great Eastern held in the collections of the National Maritime Museum in London.

The Great Eastern, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was one of the most remarkable ships ever built.

She was the largest ship ever built – by an enormous margin.
measuring 692 feet(211m) and 17,274 tons gross she was almost twice as long as any ship that had ever been built.

Her registered tonnage was six times more than any ship ever built and in an age of the most extraordinarily rapid technological development her size was not actually surpassed until the launching of the Oceanic of 701 feet (214m) in 1899 and in tonnage by the Celtic of 21,035 tons gross in 1901.

She was the largest passenger ship ever built and could carry 4,000 passengers - seven times more than ever before. A figure not surpassed until 1913 by the German ship SS Imperator.

She was the first ships to carry three different methods of propulsion – screw, paddle and sail.

She was a pioneer in the laying of subsea telegraphic cables – laying the first successful Trans-Atlantic cable to USA.

For the video check out the Mariner's Mirror YOUTUBE channel!
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36 min
April 25, 2022 Robinson Crusoe / Alexander Selkirk
We explore the astonishing intertwined tales of both Robinson Crusoe and Alexander Selkirk, two men marooned on a desert island, one in fiction, one in real life.

Robinson Crusoe was a novel published in 1719 by Daniel Defoe – that supposedly came from the pen of Crusoe himself – and told the story of how he was marooned and spent 28 years on a deserted island in the Caribbean. The book was enormously successful and is widely considered to be the beginning of realistic fiction as a genre – Crusoe’s tale was entirely plausible at a time when ships were regularly sailing from the northern hemisphere to the tropics; when ships were regularly getting wrecked; when pirates were regularly attacking them; when there was still so much to discover about the world’s geography; when the idea of a sailor finding himself accidentally or deliberately abandoned on a desert island made perfect sense.

Crusoe’s story was based on a true story – the story of one Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish mariner who found himself castaway on a remote Pacific island for four years and four months a decade before Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe. Selkirk is a fascinating character – and his history is absorbing, regardless of the fact that he found himself marooned. He was involved in buccaneering and privateering, he rounded the horn and sailed in the pacific where he attacked Spanish ships and towns – and it was here, on an island known as Mas al Tierra, 400 miles off the coast of Chile, that Selkirk chose to be marooned.

To find out more about these two brilliant stories, the way that Defoe intertwined them, and the way that we now believe they are intertwined, Dr Sam Willis spoke with Professor Andrew Lambert, Laughton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies at King's College. In 2010 Lambert joined a German expedition to Mas al Tierra – now known as Robinson Crusoe Island, The expedition focused on the relationship between the fictional character of Crusoe, the real character of Selkirk, and the development of British global strategy that culminated in the arrival of Commodore George Anson’s naval expedition in 1741.

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38 min
April 18, 2022 Iconic Ships 15: Carpathia
Carpathia is the vessel that earned her historical fame by coming to the rescue of the stricken Titanic in April 1912. She is often glossed over in the history books but Carpathia herself was a remarkable ship with a fascinating history, and one that also ends in disaster with the vessel at the bottom of the Atlantic. Carpathia was a Cunard Line transatlantic passenger ship, launched in 1908. Her dramatic story is one of innovation, competition, immigration, courage, shipwreck and war. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Dr Jay Ludowyke an author and academic who teaches writing at the University of the Sunshine Coast and the University of Queensland and the author of Carpathia: The extraordinary story of the ship that rescued the survivors of the Titanic.
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43 min

About The Mariner's Mirror Podcast

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The world's No.1 podcast dedicated to all of maritime and naval history. With one foot in the present and one in the past we bring you the most exciting and interesting current maritime projects…