This volume seeks to explore the vast history of international maritime business, focussing on themes of management, finance, and labour. Each essay considers the economics of maritime industries and the factors that influenced decision-making. Their collective purpose is to spotlight relatively neglected areas of international maritime business history, and their richly varied subjects and geographies are primarily unified by this theme, whilst demonstrating the universality of international maritime business. The essays cover the following subjects:- the Norwegian shipbroking firm, Fearnley and Eger; the labour management strategies of nineteenth century London dock companies; the hierarchies of Finnish seagoing in the nineteenth century; twentieth-century Spanish merchant shipping; an examination of Gothenburg’s leading shipping companies; an exploration of The Royal Mail’s postal contracts and overseas mail service; patterns of ownership and finance in Greek deep-sea steamship fleets; the relationships between banks and industry in interwar Italy; the expansion of Japanese post-war shipbuilding; and a survey of Chinese junk trades.

This guide covers the following major collections hosted at the Merseyside Maritime Museum:- records deposited or presented under the 1958 Public Records Act; official organisations, including the Merseyside Docks and Harbour Board (MDHB), antecedents, and successors; shipping and trade associations; and shipowners. Other, smaller categories are published in the accompanying Part II (Vol 17 of Research in Maritime History, ISBN: -0-9681288-7-4) and together they form a comprehensive catalogue of contents. The guide summarises each collections as follows:- a brief historical introduction; a list of main items; an archival code; a datespan; a quantity of records; and a reference to any key printed sources held in the museum’s Reading Room. The museum archives are made up of crucial maritime documentation and are an invaluable resource for maritime historians. The museum focuses primarily on Liverpool due to its previous status as the second major port of the United Kingdom, it also houses a great deal of national and international records in a vast variety of media.

This volume collects eight essays that all attempt to answer two key concerns: did markets for seafarers exist in the age of sail; and, if so, were these markets efficient? The question was initially approach by Charles Kindleberger, who claims a market is efficient if it permits free access for employer and employee, is supply and demand match balance so that wages increase, and that labour must command the same price across the market. The first four focus on the broadly defined early-modern period, and all agree on the existence of the markets but are divided over whether or not they are efficient. The second section asks the same questions of the nineteenth century, and receives similar answers. All of the essays take issue with the definition and application of the term ‘efficiency’ when approaching their conclusions. Each author is considered an expert within their field, and all base their research on the North Atlantic. Section 1: These essays focus on the early-modern period of maritime history. Carla Rahn Phillips considers the market for maritime labour in early-modern Spain, finding that despite the necessity of sailors and existence of the market, wages remained low and skilled maritime labourers did not have bargaining power, rendering the system inefficient. Vince Walsh examines Salem, Massachusetts, and finds that the market within Salem was efficient yet would only recruit within Salem and suffered as a result. Paul van Royen focusses on seventeenth and eighteenth century Netherlands, and finds the organisations functioned well but enable huge discrepancies in wages. David Starkey chose eighteenth century England, noting a fluctuation between efficiency and inefficiency across markets. All authors find their work linked by the prevalence of these markets and their own difficulties in determining ‘efficiency’ within these economies. Section 2: These essays focus on the maritime history of the nineteenth century. David Williams discusses the emergence on the advance note and the tremendous influence it had on market behaviour, indicating inefficient markets. Yrjo Kaukiainen considers Finland’s history of interconnected local maritime labour markets, but also struggles to quantify their ‘efficiency’ after also taking issue with the ambiguous phrase. Lewis R. Fischer addresses the imbalance of wages in Norwegian maritime markets and finds that despite the integration from local to regional markets, the system remained inefficient. Finally, Morten Hahn-Pedersen and Poul Holm consider the fishing and shipping markets in Denmark and believe the wage inconsistencies reflect an inefficient system.

John Holt (1841–1915) was a successful British merchant who made several voyages to West Africa during his lifetime to establish business and trade in the era of British Imperialism. His diaries are presented in two accounts; the first, from 1862–1872, documents his life as a merchant on the West African island of Fernando Po, initially working for James Lynslager and eventually purchasing the trade company and expanding it significantly. Holt’s own vessel, Maria, and his affiliation with the African Steam Ship Company, made his maritime trade activities particularly successful. The second account records his voyage in the Maria from Liverpool to Fernando Po in 1869–1872, and documents his trade relationships across West Africa. The volume is rounded out by diary entries from the ten-day voyage of the Peep o’Day along the Krou coast, and concludes with John Holt’s family tree. This volume presents a comprehensive account of Holt’s life as a means of preserving history and adding to the field of study of mercantile livelihoods and shipping trade industries under British imperialism. It also seeks to celebrate the individual accomplishments made in John Holt’s career.

This volume tackles the history of Shipbuilding in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century by breaking it down into six regions:- Northeast England; Southeast England; Southwest England; Northwest England; Scotland; and Ireland. The intent is to determine the different economic, social, and geographic factors that contribute to the varied rates of rise and decline of Shipbuilding across the United Kingdom, rather than view the nation’s shipbuilding history as a singular narrative, which risks omitting the complexity of each region. Each region has been ascribed an author, and each author seeks to establish the quantitative and qualitative nature of output in their region, assessing individual factors of production, the character of the enterprises, and the nature of the market.

This volume aims to continue the expansion of maritime history beyond the narrow definition - ‘the study of ships’ - to include all people involved in seagoing activities. The volume consists of eleven articles exploring the people of Northern seas, spanning the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries and primarily focused on Europe. They were originally presented at a 1992 Finland conference of the Association for the History of the Northern Seas. The articles are broad in scope, and are collected here with the intention of stimulating further academic research into the lives and histories of the people of the Northern seas, which the editors, at the time of publication, consider under-examined. The articles are divided into three sections, the first examining livelihoods dependant on the ocean; seamen, fishermen. The second group examines maritime mercantile communities; merchants; shipowners; shipbrokers. The final group examines maritime culture, encompassing the navy and the coastguard.

This book provides a bibliography of a wide scope of British and Irish post-graduate theses of maritime economic and social history. Its intent is to make these informative, under-utilised texts more accessible for scholars, in response to the deep expansion of subject as a historical discipline. It aims to keep these texts, often unpublished, from lapsing into obscurity. The author takes a broad approach to the subject area, including strands more particular to science than the humanities, and history as recent as the year of publication, intending the resource to be as comprehensive as possible, and of maximum use to present and future scholars. The material is primarily gathered and cross-referenced from Roger R. Bilboul’s Restrospective Index to Theses of Great Britain and Ireland 1716-1950, the ASLIB Index, and the Institute of Historical Research of the University of London. Each entry comprises Surname, Thesis Title (truncated for length where necessary), Degree Awarded, Awarding Institution, and Date. The database comprises 2500 entries, subdivided into twenty-five sections concerning:- the shipping business and all commercial/mercantile aspects of operation; exploration, cartography, and navigation; shipping and shipbuilding technologies; docks and harbours; maritime labour; maritime medical issues; naval history, piracy, privateering; international relations; maritime law; pollution and the maritime environment; fishing; sea-port communities; culture, literature, and art; maritime economics; marine architecture; coastal planning; tourism; and off-shore oil. The sections are further subdivided by location, and a geographical index is included for ease of reference. The author assures that the majority of theses are readily accessible.