This book examines the British Admiralty’s engagement with science and technological innovation in the nineteenth century. It is a book about people, and gross misunderstanding, about the dreams and disappointments of scientific workers and inventors in relation to the administrators who adjudicated their requests for support, and about the power of paper to escalate arguments, reduce opinions, and frustrate hopes. From instructions for naval surveying to debates about rewards to civilians for inventions, Paper Navigators puts a wide range of primary sources in the context of public debates and explores the British Admiralty’s engagement with, decision-making around, and management of questions of value, support, and funding with citizen inventors, the broader public, and their own employees. Concentrating on the Admiralty’s private, internal correspondence to explore these themes, it offers a fresh perspective on the Victorian Navy's history of innovation and exploration and is a novel addition to literature on the history of science in the nineteenth century.

This book examines the British Admiralty's engagement with science and technological innovation in the nineteenth century. It is a book about people, and gross misunderstanding, about the dreams and disappointments of scientific workers and inventors in relation to the administrators who adjudicated their requests for support, and about the power of paper to escalate arguments, reduce opinions, and frustrate hopes. From instructions for naval surveying to debates about rewards to civilians for inventions, Paper Navigators puts a wide range of primary sources in the context of public debates and explores the British Admiralty's engagement with, decision-making around, and management of questions of value, support, and funding with citizen inventors, the broader public, and their own employees. Concentrating on the Admiralty's private, internal correspondence to explore these themes, it offers a fresh perspective on the Victorian Navy's history of innovation and exploration and is a novel addition to literature on the history of science in the nineteenth century. Erika Behrisch is Professor in the Department of English, Culture, and Communication at the Royal Military College of Canada.

Specifically structured around research questions and avenues for further study, and providing the historical context to enable this further research, Modern Naval History is a key historiographical guide for students wishing to gain a deeper understanding of naval history and its contemporary relevance. Navies play an important role in the modern world, and the globalisation of economies, cultures and societies has placed a premium on maritime communications. Modern Naval History demonstrates the importance of naval history today, showing its relevance to a number of disciplines and its role in understanding how navies relate to their host societies. Richard Harding explains why naval history is still important, despite slipping from the attention of policy makers and the public since 1945, and how it can illuminate answers to questions relating to economic, diplomatic, political, social and cultural history. The book explores how naval history has informed these fields and how it can produce a richer and more informed historical understanding of navies and sea power.

This book portrays British chess life in the nineteenth century through biographical studies of ten players who shaped the modern game. From Captain Evans, inventor of the famous gambit, to Isidor Gunsberg, England's first challenger for the world championship, personal narratives are blended with game annotations to reassess players' achievements and character. The author has combined deep reading in primary sources with genealogical research to reveal new facts and correct previous misunderstandings. Major chapters on Howard Staunton and William Steinitz, in particular, highlight the tensions between Englishmen and immigrants, amateurs and professionals. The contrasting long careers of Henry Bird and Joseph Blackburne provide a thread of continuity. The lives of several other important figures in Victorian chess are also presented. More than 160 games (with diagrams), several annotated in detail, and 50 photographs and line drawings are included. Appendices provide career records for all ten; there are extensive notes, a bibliography and indexes.

The deep ocean is the planet's largest biome and holds a wealth of potential natural assets. This book gives a comprehensive account of its geological and physical processes, ecology and biology, exploitation, management, and conservation.

The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture exposes, explores, and examines what Victorians once considered flagrant breaches of decorum. Infringements that were fantasized through artforms or were actually committed exceeded entertaining parlor gossip; once in print they were condemned as socially contaminative but were also consumed as delightfully sensational. Written by scholars in diverse disciplines, this volume: Demonstrates that spreading scandals seemed to have been one of the most entertaining sources of activities but were also normative efforts made by the Victorians to ensure conformity of decorum. Provides a broad spectrum of infractions that were considered scandalous to the Victorians. Identifies Victorian transgressions that made the news and that may still shock modern readers. Covers a gamut of moral infractions and transgressions either practiced, rumored, or fantasized in art forms. This handbook is an invaluable resource about Victorian literature, art, and culture which challenges its readers to ponder perplexing questions about how and why some scandals were perpetrated and propagated in the nineteenth century while others were not, and what the controversies reveal about the human condition that persists beyond Victoria’s reign of propriety.

In Verdun, English and French speakers lived side by side. Through their home-front activities as much as through enlistment, they proved themselves partners in the prosecution of Canada's war. Shared experiences and class similarities shaped responses based first and foremost in a sense of local identity. Fighting from Home paints a comprehensive, at times intimate, portrait of Verdun and Verdunites at war. Durflinger offers an innovative interpretive approach to wartime Canadian and Quebec social and cultural dynamics in this history of the Canadian home front during the Second World War.