MARITIME
All at sea
The Ship Asunder: A Maritime History of Britain in Eleven Vessels
by Tom Nancollas
Particular Books, 336 pages, £20
In the office of Lloyd’s of London, the pioneers of marine insurance, hangs the Lutine bell, recovered from the wreck of the ship Lutine in 1858. From Georgian ship deck to sea floor to modern city office, Tom Nancollas documents the life and afterlife of the bell and 10 other relics to tell the story of Britain’s maritime past from the Bronze Age to the 20th century.
These fragments of maritime Britain offer a portal into everyday nautical life via the remains of a Cornish fishing vessel and the ropery of Chatham Dockyard, but also give insight into a broader maritime culture manifested in 16th-century seafaring “trophies” and imposing Victorian figureheads. Nancollas conveys a sense of yearning for a lost way of life, but simultaneously provides an honest reckoning with the forms of exploitation this world made possible. In particular, Britain’s slaving history is considered through the aforementioned Lutine bell. Like the bell, the wrecks of slave ships and their artefacts could be recovered from the depths and brought into public view to facilitate a more direct confrontation with the dark elements of Britain’s maritime past.
Although the narrative arc of British ascendency and decline, especially from the 16th century onwards, will be familiar to most maritime history enthusiasts, the strength of the book – and the skill of Nancollas as an elegant and evocative writer – is how his historical account is woven into his own personal journey across the heritage sites of maritime Britain. For while visible only in fragments, Nancollas shows that Britain’s maritime past is still present across coastal towns and ports from the picturesque village of Robin Hood’s Bay, and the cottage built with the timbers of a shipwrecked brig, to the propeller of RMS Lusitania that lies rusting in Liverpool’s Albert Dock.
Together these relics – objects of the past in the present – make up The Ship Asunder, a composite of Britain’s rich and complicated maritime history.
Philippa Hellawell is an early modern records specialist at the National Archives, and specialises in maritime and colonial history
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