Sam speaks to Sarah Wassberg Johnson, Director of Exhibitions and Outreach at the excellent Hudson River Maritime Museum. In the conversation we discover just how important the Hudson River is to the development of American history. Topics include ice-harvesting, the great fire of New York of 1835, the American Revolution, the appreciation of the wilderness, the launch of the environmental movement, the suing of EXXON in the 1980s for polluting the Hudson, oral history, fishing, trade, power plants, and the extraordinary and unique ecology of the Hudson.

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Dr Sam Willis heads to the new JMW Turner exhibition at the Tate Britain: 'Turner's Modern World'. Turner is one of the best known of all British artists and one of history's greatest maritime artists. His painting The Fighting Temeraire is a national treasure and now appears on the new £20 note. Sam meets the curator of the Turner bequest, David Blayney Brown, and focuses on three of Turner's paintings: 'A Maritime Disaster' a magnificent depiction of the wreck of the Amphitrite, a convict ship carrying female convicts to Australia that ran aground in France in 1833; 'Snowstorm: Steam-boat off a harbour's mouth' one of Turner's most famous paintings of a catastrophic storm in the North Sea in 1842; and 'The Fighting Temeraire'. - the dreamlike canvas showing HMS Temeraire, veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar, being towed up the Thames in the setting sun to the breaker's yard.

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Sam Willis explores the remarkable conservation project underway in Portsmouth to preserve Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar, HMS Victory, for future generations. Her hull - obviously designed to float - has started to suffer from a century in dry dock and her immensely complex rigging has been dismantled. Her masts are about to be removed. Sam talks with Nick Ball who works with Victory at the National Museum of the Royal Navy and also with David Davies, historian novelist and Chairman of the Society for Nautical Research.

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Dr Sam Willis talks with David Davies, naval and maritime historian and author of naval fiction and Chairman of the Society for Nautical Research, about the importance of maritime history. The plans for the podcast are laid out: this will be a podcast that brings our listeners the most important global stories in maritime history; gives behind the scenes and special access to maritime museums and archives around the world; and transports our listeners to the maritime past with original and previously unpublished historical sources and accounts.

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