Podcasts about National Maritime Museum

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is Paul Marden.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website SkiptheQueue.fm.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter  or Bluesky for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast.Competition ends on 9th July 2025. The winner will be contacted via Bluesky. Show references: Matthew Tanner, Vice President of AIM and Independent Consultant https://aim-museums.co.uk/Richard Morsley, CEO of Chatham Historic Dockyardhttps://thedockyard.co.uk/Hannah Prowse, CEO, Portsmouth Historic Quarterhttps://portsmouthhq.org/Dominic Jones, CEO Mary Rose Trusthttps://maryrose.org/Andrew Baines, Executive Director, Museum Operations, National Museum of the Royal Navyhttps://www.nmrn.org.uk/ Transcriptions: Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue. The podcast of people working in and working with visitor attractions, and today you join me in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. I am actually in the shadow of HMS Victory at the moment, right next door to the Mary Rose. And I'm at the Association of Independent Museum's annual conference, and it is Wednesday night, and we're just about to enjoy the conference dinner. We've been told by Dominic Jones, CEO of Mary Rose, to expect lots of surprises and unexpected events throughout the meal, which I understand is a walking meal where we'll partake of our food and drink as we're wandering around the museum itself, moving course to course around different parts of the museum. So that sounds very exciting. Paul Marden:  Today's episode, I'm going to be joined by a I don't know what the collective noun is, for a group of Maritime Museum senior leaders, but that's what they are, and we're going to be talking about collaboration within and between museums, especially museums within the maritime sector. Is this a subject that we've talked about a lot previously? I know we've had Dominic Jones before as our number one most listened episode talking about collaboration in the sector, but it's a subject I think is really worthwhile talking about. Paul Marden: Understanding how museums work together, how they can stretch their resources, increase their reach by working together and achieving greater things than they can do individually. I do need to apologise to you, because it's been a few weeks since our last episode, and there's been lots going on in Rubber Cheese HQ, we have recently become part of a larger organisation, Crowd Convert, along with our new sister organisation, the ticketing company, Merac.Paul Marden:  So there's been lots of work for me and Andy Povey, my partner in crime, as we merge the two businesses together. Hence why there's been a little bit of a lapse between episodes. But the good news is we've got tonight's episode. We've got one more episode where I'll be heading down to Bristol, and I'll talk a little bit more about that later on, and then we're going to take our usual summer hiatus before we start the next season. So two more episodes to go, and I'm really excited. Paul Marden:  Without further ado, I think it's time for us to meet our guests tonight. Let me welcome our guests for this evening. Matthew Tanner, the Vice President of AIM and an Independent Consultant within the museum sector. You've also got a role within international museums as well. Matthew, remind me what that was.Matthew Tanner: That's right, I was president of the International Congress of Maritime Museums.Paul Marden: And that will be relevant later. I'm sure everyone will hear. Richard Morsley, CEO of Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust. I've got Hannah Prowse with me, the CEO of Portsmouth Historic Quarter, the inimitable chief cheerleader for Skip the Queue Dominic Jones, CEO of Mary Rose Trust.Dominic Jones: Great to be back.Paul Marden: I expect this to be the number one episode because, you know, it's got to knock your previous episode off the hit list.Dominic Jones: Listen with guests like this. It's going to be the number one. You've got the big hitters, and you've even got one more to go. This is gonna be incredible.Paul Marden:  Exactly. And I've got Andrew Baines, the Executive Director Museum Operations at the National Museum of the Royal Navy. That's quite a title.Dominic Jones: He loves a title that's a lot shorter than the last.Paul Marden: Okay, so we always have icebreakers. And actually, it must be said, listeners, you, unless you're watching the YouTube, we've got the the perfect icebreaker because we've started on Prosecco already. So I'm feeling pretty lubed up. Cheers. So icebreakers, and I'm going to be fair to you, I'm not going to pick on you individually this time, which is what I would normally do with my victims. I'm going to ask you, and you can chime in when you feel you've got the right answer. So first of all, I'd like to hear what the best concert or festival is that you've been to previously.Hannah Prowse: That's really easy for me, as the proud owner of two teenage daughters, I went Tay Tay was Slay. Slay. It was amazing. Three hours of just sheer performative genius and oh my god, that girl stamina. It was just insane. So yeah, it's got to be Tay Tay.Paul Marden: Excellent. That's Taylor Swift. For those of you that aren't aware and down with the kids, if you could live in another country for a year, what would Dominic Jones: We not all answer the gig. I've been thinking of a gig. Well, I was waiting. Do we not all answer one, Rich has got a gig. I mean, you can't just give it to Hannah. Richard, come in with your gig.Richard Morsley: Thank you. So I can't say it's the best ever, but. It was pretty damn awesome. I went to see pulp at the O2 on Saturday night. They were amazing. Are they still bringing it? They were amazing. Incredible. Transport me back.Matthew Tanner:  Members mentioned the Mary Rose song. We had this.Dominic Jones: Oh, come on, Matthew, come on. That was brilliant. That was special. I mean, for me, I'm not allowed to talk about it. It's probably end ups. But you know, we're not allowed to talk you know, we're not allowed to talk about other than here. But I'm taking my kids, spoiler alert, if you're listening to see Shawn Mendes in the summer. So that will be my new favourite gig, because it's the first gig for my kids. So I'm very excited about that. That's amazing. Amazing. Andrew, any gigs?Andrew Baines: It has to be Blondie, the amazing. Glen Beck writing 2019, amazing.Dominic Jones:  Can you get any cooler? This is going to be the number one episode, I can tell.Paul Marden:  Okay, let's go with number two. If you could live in another country for a year, which one would you choose? Hannah Prowse: Morocco. Paul Marden: Really? Oh, so you're completely comfortable with the heat. As I'm wilting next.Hannah Prowse: Completely comfortable. I grew up in the Middle East, my as an expat brat, so I'm really happy out in the heat. I just love the culture, the art, the landscape, the food, the prices, yeah, Morocco. For me, I thinkMatthew Tanner: I've been doing quite a lot of work recently in Hong Kong. Oh, wow. It's this amazing mix of East and West together. There's China, but where everybody speaks English, which is fantastic.Dominic Jones:  I lived in Hong Kong for a few years, and absolutely loved it. So I do that. But I think if I could choose somewhere to live, it's a it's a bit of cheating answer, because the country's America, but the place is Hawaii, because I think I'm meant for Hawaii. I think I've got that sort of style with how I dress, not today, because you are but you can get away with it. We're hosting, so. Paul Marden:  Last one hands up, if you haven't dived before, D with Dom.Dominic Jones: But all of your listeners can come Dive the 4d at the Mary Rose in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, as well as the other amazing things you can do here with our friends and National Museum of Portsmouth Historic Quarter, he will cut this bit out.Paul Marden:  Yeah, there will be a little bit of strict editing going on. And that's fair. So we want to talk a little bit today about collaboration within the Maritime Museum collective as we've got. I was saying on the intro, I don't actually know what the collective noun is for a group of Maritime Museum leaders, a wave?Hannah Prowse: A desperation?Paul Marden: Let's start with we've talked previously. I know on your episode with Kelly, you talked about collaboration here in the dockyard, but I think it's really important to talk a little bit about how Mary Rose, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and the National Museum of the Royal Navy all work together. So talk a little bit for listeners that don't know about the collaboration that you've all got going. Dominic Jones:  We've got a wonderful thing going on, and obviously Hannah and Andrew will jump in. But we've got this great site, which is Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. We've got Portsmouth Historic Quarter that sort of curates, runs, owns the site, and I'll let Hannah come into that. We've got the Mary Rose, which is my favourite, amazing museum, and then we've got all of the museums and ships to the National Museum of the Royal Navy. But do you want to go first, Hannah, and talk about sort of what is Portsmouth Historic Quarter and the dockyard to you? Hannah Prowse:  Yeah, so at Portsmouth Historic Quarter, we are the landlords of the site, and ultimately have custody of this and pretty hard over on the other side of the water. And it's our job to curate the space, make sure it's accessible to all and make it the most spectacular destination that it can be. Where this point of debate interest and opportunity is around the destination versus attraction debate. So obviously, my partners here run amazing attractions, and it's my job to cite those attractions in the best destination that it can possibly be.Matthew Tanner: To turn it into a magnet that drawsDominic Jones: And the infrastructure. I don't know whether Hannah's mentioned it. She normally mentions it every five seconds. Have you been to the new toilets? Matthew, have you been to these new toilets?Paul Marden: Let's be honest, the highlight of a museum. Richard Morsley: Yeah, get that wrong. We're in trouble.Hannah Prowse: It's very important. Richard Morsley: But all of the amazing ships and museums and you have incredible.Paul Marden: It's a real draw, isn't it? And you've got quite a big estate, so you you've got some on the other side of the dockyard behind you with boat trips that we take you over.Andrew Baines:  Absolutely. So we run Victor here and warrior and 33 on the other side of the hub with the Royal Navy submarine museum explosion working in partnership with BHQ. So a really close collaboration to make it as easy as possible for people to get onto this site and enjoy the heritage that we are joint custodians of. Paul Marden:  Yeah, absolutely. It's amazing. So we're talking a little bit about museums collaborating together, which really is the essence of what we're here for conference, isn't it? I remember when we had the keynote this morning, we were talking about how important it is for everybody to come together. There's no egos here. Everyone's sharing the good stuff. And it was brilliant as well. Given that you're all maritime museums, is it more important for you to differentiate yourselves from one another and compete, or is it more important for you to collaborate?Richard Morsley: Well, from my perspective, it's there is certainly not competitive. I think there's sufficient, I was sufficient distance, I think, between the the attractions for that to be the case, and I think the fact we're all standing here today with a glass of wine in hand, with smiles on our face kind of says, says a lot, actually, in terms of the collaboration within the sector. And as you say that the the AIM conference today that for me, is right, right at the heart of it, it's how we as an independent museum sector, all come together, and we share our knowledge, we share our best practice, and once a year, we have this kind of amazing celebration of these incredible organisations and incredible people coming together and having a wonderful couple of days. Matthew Tanner: But if I could step in there, it's not just the wine, is it rum, perhaps. The maritime sector in particular is one that is is so closely knit and collected by the sea, really. So in the international context, with the International Congress, is about 120 museums. around the world that come together every two years into the fantastic Congress meetings, the connections between these people have come from 1000s of miles away so strong, it's actually joy and reminds us of why we are so excited about the maritime.Paul Marden: I saw you on LinkedIn last year. I think it was you had Mystic Seaport here, didn't you?Dominic Jones: We did and we've had Australia. We've had so many. It all came from the ICM conference I went with and we had such a good time, didn't we saw Richard there. We saw Matthew, and it was just brilliant. And there's pinch yourself moments where you're with museums that are incredible, and then afterwards they ring you and ask you for advice. I'm thinking like there's a lady from France ringing me for advice. I mean, what's that about? I passed her to Andrew.Hannah Prowse: I think also from a leadership perspective, a lot of people say that, you know, being a CEO is the loneliest job in the world, but actually, if you can reach out and have that network of people who actually are going through the same stuff that you're going through, and understand the sector you're working in. It's really, really great. So if I'm having a rubbish day, Dom and I will frequently meet down in the gardens outside between our two offices with a beer or an ice cream and just go ah at each other. And that's really important to be able to do.Dominic Jones: And Hannah doesn't laugh when I have a crisis. I mean, she did it once. She did it and it hurt my feelings.Hannah Prowse: It was really funny.Dominic Jones:  Well, laughter, Dominic, Hannah Prowse: You needed. You needed to be made. You did. You did. But you know, and Richard and I have supported each other, and occasionally.Richard Morsley: You know, you're incredibly helpful when we're going through a recruitment process recently.Hannah Prowse: Came and sat in on his interview.Richard Morsley: We were rogue. Hannah Prowse: We were so bad, we should never be allowed to interview today. Paul Marden:  I bet you were just there taking a list of, yeah, they're quite good. I'm not going to agree to that one.Hannah Prowse: No, it was, it was great, and it's lovely to have other people who are going through the same stuff as you that you can lean on. Richard Morsley: Yeah, absolutely.Dominic Jones: Incredible. It's such an important sector, as Matthew said, and we are close, the water doesn't divide us. It makes us it makes us stronger.Matthew Tanner: Indeed. And recently, of course, there's increasing concern about the state of the marine environment, and maritime museums are having to take on that burden as well, to actually express to our puppets. It's not just about the ships and about the great stories. It's also about the sea. It's in excess, and we need to look after it. Paul Marden: Yeah, it's not just a view backwards to the past. It's around how you take that and use that as a model to go forward. Matthew Tanner: Last week, the new David Attenborough piece about the ocean 26 marathon museums around the world, simultaneously broadcasting to their local audiences. Dominic Jones: And it was phenomenal. It was such a good film. It was so popular, and the fact that we, as the Mary Rose, could host it thanks to being part of ICM, was just incredible. Have you seen it? Paul Marden:  I've not seen Dominic Jones: It's coming to Disney+, any day now, he's always first to know it's on. There you go. So watch it there. It's so good. Paul Marden: That's amazing. So you mentioned Disney, so that's a kind of an outside collaboration. Let's talk a little bit. And this is a this is a rubbish segue, by the way. Let's talk a little bit about collaborating outside of the sector itself, maybe perhaps with third party rights holders, because I know that you're quite pleased with your Lego exhibition at the moment.Richard Morsley: I was actually going to jump in there. Dominic, because you've got to be careful what you post on LinkedIn. There's no such thing as I don't know friends Exactly. Really.Dominic Jones: I was delighted if anyone was to steal it from us, I was delighted it was you. Richard Morsley: And it's been an amazing exhibition for us. It's bringing bringing Lego into the Historic Dockyard Chatham. I think one of the one of the things that we sometimes lack is that that thing that's kind of truly iconic, that the place is iconic, the site is incredible, but we don't have that household name. We don't have a Mary Rose. We don't have a victory. So actually working in partnership, we might get there later. We'll see how the conversation, but yeah, how we work with third parties, how we use third party IP and bring that in through exhibitions, through programming. It's really important to us. So working at a Lego brick Rex exhibition, an exhibition that really is a museum exhibition, but also tells the story of three Chatham ships through Lego, it's absolutely perfect for us, and it's performed wonderfully. It's done everything that we would have hoped it would be. Dominic Jones: I'm bringing the kids in the summer. I love Chatham genuinely. I know he stole the thing from LinkedIn, but I love Chatham. So I'll be there. I'll be there. I'll spend money in the shop as well.Richard Morsley: Buy a book. Yeah.Paul Marden: Can we buy Lego? Richard Morsley:  Of course you can buy Lego. Paul Marden: So this is a this is a magnet. It is sucking the kids into you, but I bet you're seeing something amazing as they interpret the world that they've seen around them at the museum in the Lego that they can play with.Richard Morsley: Of some of some of the models that are created off the back of the exhibition by these children is remind and adults actually, but mainly, mainly the families are amazing, but and you feel awful at the end of the day to painstakingly take them apart.Richard Morsley: Where is my model?Dominic Jones: So we went to see it in the Vasa, which is where he stole the idea from. And I decided to, sneakily, when they were doing that, take a Charles model that was really good and remodel it to look like the Mary Rose, and then post a picture and say, I've just built the Mary Rose. I didn't build the Mary Rose. Some Swedish person bought the Mary Rose. I just added the flags. You get what you say. Hannah Prowse: We've been lucky enough to be working with the Lloyds register foundation this year, and we've had this brilliant she sees exhibition in boathouse four, which is rewriting women into maritime history. So the concept came from Lloyd's Register, which was, you know, the untold stories of women in maritime working with brilliant photographers and textile designers to tell their stories. And they approached me and said, "Can we bring this into the dockyard?" And we said, "Yes, but we'd really love to make it more local." And they were an amazing partner. And actually, what we have in boathouse for is this phenomenal exhibition telling the stories of the women here in the dockyard.Richard Morsley: And then going back to that point about collaboration, not competition, that exhibition, then comes to Chatham from February next year, but telling, telling Chatham stories instead of. Hannah Prowse:  Yeah, Richard came to see it here and has gone, "Oh, I love what you've done with this. Okay, we can we can enhance, we can twist it." So, you know, I've hoped he's going to take our ideas and what we do with Lloyd's and make it a million times better.Richard Morsley: It's going to be an amazing space.Dominic Jones: Richard just looks at LinkedIn and gets everyone's ideas.Andrew Baines: I think one of the exciting things is those collaborations that people will be surprised by as well. So this summer, once you've obviously come to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and experience the joys of that, and then you've called off on Chatham and another day to see what they've got there, you can go off to London Zoo, and we are working in partnership with London Zoo, and we have a colony of Death Watch beetle on display. Paul Marden:  Oh, wonderful. I mean, can you actually hear them? Dominic Jones: Not necessarily the most exciting.Andrew Baines: I'll grant you. But you know, we've got a Chelsea gold medal on in the National Museum of the Royal Navy for collaboration with the Woodlands Foundation, looking at Sudden Oak death. And we've got an exhibition with ZSL at London Zoo, which I don't think anybody comes to a National Maritime Museum or an NMRN National Museum The Royal Navy, or PHQ, PhD, and expects to bump into tiny little animals, no, butDominic Jones: I love that, and it's such an important story, the story of Victor. I mean, look, you're both of you, because Matthew's involved with Victor as well. Your victory preservation and what you're doing is incredible. And the fact you can tell that story, it's LSL, I love that.Andrew Baines: Yeah. And we're actually able to feed back into the sector. And one of the nice things is, we know we talk about working collaboratively, but if you look at the victory project, for example, our project conservator came down the road from Chatham, equally, which you one of.Richard Morsley: Our your collections manager.Paul Marden: So it's a small pool and you're recycling.Andrew Baines: Progression and being people in develop and feed them on.Matthew Tanner:  The open mindedness, yeah, taking and connecting from all over, all over the world, when I was working with for the SS Great Britain, which is the preserved, we know, great iron steam chip, preserved as as he saw her, preserved in a very, very dry environment. We'll take technology for that we found in the Netherlands in a certain seeds factory where they had to, they had to package up their seeds in very, very low humidity environments.Paul Marden:  Yes, otherwise you're gonna get some sprouting going on. Matthew Tanner:   Exactly. That's right. And that's the technology, which we then borrowed to preserve a great historic ship. Paul Marden: I love that. Dominic Jones:  And SS Great Britain is amazing, by the way you did such a good job there. It's one of my favourite places to visit. So I love that.Paul Marden:  I've got a confession to make. I'm a Somerset boy, and I've never been.Dominic Jones: Have you been to yoga list? Oh yeah, yeah. I was gonna say.Paul Marden: Yeah. I am meeting Sam Mullins at the SS Great Britain next next week for our final episode of the season. Matthew Tanner: There you go.Dominic Jones: And you could go to the where they made the sale. What's the old court canvas or Corker Canvas is out there as well. There's so many amazing places down that neck of the woods. It's so good.Paul Marden: Quick segue. Let's talk. Let's step away from collaboration, or only very lightly, highlights of today, what was your highlight talk or thing that you've seen?Richard Morsley: I think for me, it really was that focus on community and engagement in our places and the importance of our institutions in the places that we're working. So the highlight, absolutely, for me, opening this morning was the children's choir as a result of the community work that the Mary Rose trust have been leading, working.Dominic Jones:  Working. So good. Richard Morsley: Yeah, fabulous. Paul Marden:  Absolutely. Matthew Tanner: There's an important point here about about historic ships which sometimes get kind of positioned or landed by developers alongside in some ports, as if that would decorate a landscape. Ships actually have places. Yes, they are about they are connected to the land. They're not just ephemeral. So each of these ships that are here in Portsmouth and the others we've talked about actually have roots in their home ports and the people and the communities that they served. They may well have roots 1000s of miles across the ocean as well, makes them so exciting, but it's a sense of place for a ship. Hannah Prowse: So I think that all of the speakers were obviously phenomenal.Dominic Jones: And including yourself, you were very good.Hannah Prowse: Thank you. But for me, this is a slightly random one, but I always love seeing a group of people coming in and watching how they move in the space. I love seeing how people interact with the buildings, with the liminal spaces, and where they have where they run headlong into something, where they have threshold anxiety. So when you have a condensed group of people, it's something like the AIM Conference, and then they have points that they have to move around to for the breakout sessions. But then watching where their eyes are drawn, watching where they choose to go, and watching how people interact with the heritage environment I find really fascinating. Paul Marden: Is it like flocks of birds? What are moving around in a space? Hannah Prowse: Exactly. Yeah.Paul Marden: I say, this morning, when I arrived, I immediately joined a queue. I had no idea what the queue was, and I stood there for two minutes.Dominic Jones: I love people in the joint queues, we normally try and sell you things.Paul Marden: The person in front of me, and I said, "What we actually queuing for?" Oh, it's the coffee table. Oh, I don't need coffee. See you later. Yes.Dominic Jones: So your favourite bit was the queue. Paul Marden: My favourite..Dominic Jones: That's because you're gonna plug Skip the Queue. I love it.Dominic Jones: My favourite moment was how you divided the conference on a generational boundary by talking about Kojak.Dominic Jones: Kojak? Yes, it was a gamble, because it was an old film, and I'll tell you where I saw it. I saw it on TV, and the Mary Rose have got it in their archives. So I said, Is there any way I could get this to introduce me? And they all thought I was crazy, but I think it worked. But my favorite bit, actually, was just after that, when we were standing up there and welcoming everyone to the conference. Because for four years, we've been talking about doing this for three years. We've been arranging it for two years. It was actually real, and then the last year has been really scary. So for us to actually pull it off with our partners, with the National Museum of the Royal Navy, with Portsmouth Historic quarter, with all of our friends here, was probably the proudest moment for me. So for me, I loved it. And I'm not going to lie, when the children were singing, I was a little bit emotional, because I was thinking, this is actually happened. This is happening. So I love that, and I love tonight. Tonight's going to be amazing. Skip the queue outside Dive, the Mary Rose 4d come and visit. He won't edit that out. He won't edit that out. He can't keep editing Dive, The Mary Rose.Dominic Jones: Andrew, what's his favourite? Andrew Baines: Oh yes. Well, I think it was the kids this morning, just for that reminder when you're in the midst of budgets and visitor figures and ticket income and development agreements, and why is my ship falling apart quicker than I thought it was going to fall apart and all those kind of things actually just taking that brief moment to see such joy and enthusiasm for the next generation. Yeah, here directly connected to our collections and that we are both, PHQ, NRN supported, MRT, thank you both really just a lovely, lovely moment.Paul Marden: 30 kids singing a song that they had composed, and then backflip.Dominic Jones: It was a last minute thing I had to ask Jason. Said, Jason, can you stand to make sure I don't get hit? That's why I didn't want to get hit, because I've got a precious face. Hannah Prowse: I didn't think the ship fell apart was one of the official parts of the marketing campaign.Paul Marden: So I've got one more question before we do need to wrap up, who of your teams have filled in the Rubber Cheese Website Survey. Dominic Jones: We, as Mary Rose and Ellen, do it jointly as Portsmouth historic document. We've done it for years. We were an early adopter. Of course, we sponsored it. We even launched it one year. And we love it. And actually, we've used it in our marketing data to improve loads of things. So since that came out, we've made loads of changes. We've reduced the number of clicks we've done a load of optimum website optimisation. It's the best survey for visitor attractions. I feel like I shouldn't be shouting out all your stuff, because that's all I do, but it is the best survey.Paul Marden: I set you up and then you just ran so we've got hundreds of people arriving for this evening's event. We do need to wrap this up. I want one last thing, which is, always, we have a recommendation, a book recommendation from Nepal, and the first person to retweet the message on Bluesky will be offered, of course, a copy of the book. Does anyone have a book that they would like to plug of their own or, of course, a work or fiction that they'd like to recommend for the audience.Paul Marden: And we're all looking at you, Matthew.Dominic Jones: Yeah. Matthew is the book, man you're gonna recommend. You'reAndrew Baines: The maritime.Paul Marden: We could be absolutely that would be wonderful.Matthew Tanner: Two of them jump into my mind, one bit more difficult to read than the other, but the more difficult to read. One is Richard Henry. Dana D, a n, a, an American who served before the mast in the 19th century as an ordinary seaman on a trading ship around the world and wrote a detailed diary. It's called 10 years before the mast. And it's so authentic in terms of what it was really like to be a sailor going around Cape corn in those days. But the one that's that might be an easier gift is Eric Newby, the last great grain race, which was just before the Second World War, a journalist who served on board one of the last great Windjammers, carrying grain from Australia back to Europe and documenting his experience higher loft in Gales get 17 knots in his these giant ships, absolute white knuckle rides. Paul Marden: Perfect, perfect. Well, listeners, if you'd like a copy of Matthew's book recommendation, get over to blue sky. Retweet the post that Wenalyn will put out for us. I think the last thing that we really need to do is say cheers and get on with the rest of the year. Richard Morsley: Thank you very much. Andrew Baines: Thank you.Paul Marden: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others to find us. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them to increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcripts from this episode and more over on our website, skipthequeue fm.  The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsTake the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

Join Sharjeel Ahmad, Imam Zakaria and Nosharwan Ahmad for Tuesday's show from 4-6pm where we will be discussing: 'Ocean Day' and 'Men's Mental Health.´ Ocean Day World Ocean Day-celebrated annually on June 8—is a global reminder of the ocean's crucial role in sustaining life. Covering over 70% of the Earth, oceans regulate climate, produce oxygen, provide food, and support millions of species. Yet today, they face serious threats from pollution, overfishing, and climate change. In this program, we explore how we can protect our oceans for future generations. Men's Mental Health This week marks Men's Mental Health Week, a vital opportunity to shine a light on the often overlooked issue of men's wellbeing. Despite growing awareness, many men continue to struggle in silence due to stigma, societal expectations, or lack of support. We'll explore how opening up, connecting, and standing shoulder to shoulder can change lives— especially among young people and minority communities. Guests : Laura Boon-Williams - Senior Curator of Contemporary Maritime at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Chris Graham - Head of Ocean Regeneration and Sustainable Seafood at the Marine Conservation Society Rachel Lopata MBE - Co-Founder of Sea Changers Charity Lloyd - Mental health counsellor Isaac Kenyon - CEO and co-founder of Climate Explorers CIC Producers : Azka Hina and Aisha Malik

The National Maritime Museum is not a museum many think of when they come to London, but steeped in history with artifacts from across the world this is one to be seen and to know more about in the wonderful area of Greenwich. Join us for more....

LAW 251 Dalton Orwig talked to Desi Tobias from Tobias and Comer Law on Mobile Mornings. It is that time of the year get out on the water and spend time on the water! The guys talked about the Blessing of the Fleet, the National Maritime Museum and Maritime industry and law.  Tobias and Comer Law want you to stay safe and have informative tips on their website https://www.tobiascomerlaw.com/.  

Sara Caputo"Sentieri sull'acqua"Le origini della cartografia e la nuova immagine del mondoTouring Club Italianohttps://www.touringclubstore.com/it/prodotto/sentieri-sull-acqua-15332Le mappe non rappresentano il mondo come lo vediamo, ma come lo immaginiamo.Una carta geografica non descrive la realtà, la ricrea.La cartografia moderna nasce, come Venere, tra le onde del mare. Quando lo scafo di una nave fende l'acqua, del suo passaggio non permane che l'effimera spuma. Oceani e mari non conservano memoria dei transiti umani in superficie, sono le mappe a tracciarne le rotte. Disegnando complesse trame di linee, schiacciando il globo su un'innaturale bidimensionalità, rendendo solido ciò che è liquido, concreto quel che è impalpabile. È così che il mondo è diventato leggibile, navigabile, dominabile. Sulla scia di questa suggestione Sara Caputo, brillante storica di Cambridge, invita a viaggiare alle origini della cartografia, raccontandone le avventure e gli intrecci, dalle imprese di Cristoforo Colombo alle moderne tecnologie di tracciamento delle correnti oceaniche, incrociando rotte favolose da Odisseo ad Achab, da Sir Francis Drake a James Cook. Un saggio dal felice passo narrativo, che rivoluziona per sempre il nostro modo di guardare alle mappe.Sara Caputo è Senior Research Fellow al Magdalene College di Cambridge. Specializzata in storia marittima e nella storia dei secoli XVIII e XIX, ha vinto numerosi premi, tra cui il Prince Consort and Thirlwall Prize. È stata Visiting Fellow in Germania, in California e presso il National Maritime Museum di Greenwich. Sentieri sull'acqua è il suo primo libro pubblicato in Italia.«Caputo riesce a trasmettere lo spirito pionieristico e avventuroso di quei primi viaggi verso l'ignoto.» Royal Geographical SocietyIL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarewww.ilpostodelleparole.itDiventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.

"Inspired by the preservation of expressions of lesser heard voices and culture, and the significance of sometimes uncomfortable conflicts of power, of the who decides the amplification of those voices and how."  National Maritime Museum exhibition, London reimagined by Dee Fry. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world's most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Inside the National Maritime Museum in Maritime Greenwich, we explore the extensive polar exhibition, in which sound plays a major part. In this recording we hear a description of some of the traditional ways of life of the Inuits, and later, a verbal description of life as a polar researcher. These video installations bring to life the maritime world at the heart of the wider heritage site.  UNESCO listing: Maritime Greenwich Recorded by Cities and Memory.  ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world's most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Barbara Scully, Declan Buckley and Seán Moncrieff help tackle listener dilemmas - live from the Dún Laoghaire National Maritime Museum!

Seán was joined by Brian Lloyd, Fionnuala Jones, Leslie Williams, Barbara Scully and Declan Buckley live from the Dún Laoghaire National Maritime Museum with thanks to Marks and Spencer!This week's booze:Cerro Fuerte Malbec Rosé.Cerro Fuerte Chardonnay.Cerro Fuerte Malbec.

As authored by Avshalom Zemer.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comWelcome back. Let's finish our stroll along the Columbia and find out more about this intriguing place. In the first installment we learned how Warrior Point got its name, and about and the rock formation that became the geological cornerstone of Sauvie Island. In this conclusion we arrive at Warrior Rock Lighthouse, the smallest lighthouse in Oregon, and the only one in operation far from the coastline. For this installment I must thank the kind folks at warriorrock.org for sharing several hard-to-find photos and shedding light on some scarcely known stories about the lighthouse. Pre-contact The closest Native American village to Warrior Point on Sauvie Island was Namuit, unmentioned by Lewis & Clark, excepting “2 Houses” drawn on a map in the vicinity of the Warrior Point trailhead is today. I suppose it is worth pointing out that “Warrior Rock” and “Warrior Point” describe two different geological places about a half mile away from each other, and are often interchanged. In 1959 amateur archeologist Emory Stone said of Namuit, “Originally a very large village, it is now completely washed away. Banks of camp rock extend for a quarter of a mile along the river bank. Large collections were made from it as it was eroding away about the turn of the century.” He added, “[It] must have been quite old, for traces of fire are found eight or more feet deep beneath the silt.”Warrior Point was a canoe burial ground. Native Americans practiced this form of burial all along the lower Columbia at promontory sites. Canoes were elevated or placed in trees with the dead wrapped in cedar bark blankets with their belongings. The bows of the canoes pointed toward the ocean.John Kirk Townsend described Mount Coffin, a canoe burial site 13 miles downriver, in his 1841 narrative: "[the burial site] consisted of a great number of canoes containing bodies of Indians, each being carefully wrapped in blankets, and supplied with many of his personal effects in the form of weapons and implements...wrapped in his mantle of skins, laid in his canoe with his paddle, his fishing-spear, and other implements beside him, and placed aloft on some rock or eminence overlooking the river, or bay, or lake that he had frequented. He is fitted out to launch away upon those placid streams…which are prepared in the next world.”Warrior Rock LighthouseThe light house was erected in 1889, a wood framed building with a shed roof on a tall sandstone foundation. The original 1500 lb. fog bell, cast in 1855, tolled for 30 years in a lighthouse at Cape Disappointment prior to installation at Warrior Rock. In 1912, the Lighthouse Service requested $2,000 to purchase 1.61 acres near the lighthouse on which stood a “fairly good dwelling,” which was being occupied by the keeper. The desired amount was appropriated on October 22, 1913, and the dwelling and other buildings on the adjoining land were acquired by the government. (lighthousefriends.com)Looking closely at this photo we can see quite a number of buildings, including a large mill building in the right background, where there are now none.When the river was high, the tower's sandstone foundation and surrounding land would often be underwater. At those times, DeRoy rode an aerial tram he concocted by stringing a cable from a tree near the dwelling to the lighthouse (lighthousefriends.com)Waterway WoesWarrior Rock Lighthouse has seen its share of incidents.1898 - US revenue cutter Commodore Perry ran on a reef a short distance above Warrior Rock. “Pilots familiar with the river always give the reef a wide berth. The steamer Manzanillo had her bottom torn out there 10 years ago, and about 20 years ago the old steamship Sierra Nevada was impaled on the reef.” 1910 - US Lighthouse Tender Heather ran aground on rocks near Warrior Rock. Not badly damaged.1927 - The tug Cricket was sunk near Warrior Rock lighthouse when she collided head on with the steamer Wapama.1928 - A new light to aid river navigation was established on a sunken rock about one fourth of a mile above the Warrior Rock Lighthouse.1930 - The tug Dix which propelled the barge Swan and provided electric current to the floating dance pavilion was found in 50 feet of water a short distance above Warrior Rock lighthouse. Eight people were killed in the collision with the schooner Davenport. 1969 - The lighthouse was struck by a barge. While surveying the damage, the 1500 lb. bell fell to the shoreline and cracked.The bell now resides at the entrance of the Columbia County Courthouse.The current lighthouse owners added, “The lighthouse gets hit by boats more frequently than we would expect. We've heard of two instances in the 90's.”The Warrior Rock formation creates an unusual depth near shore of about 50 ft. Possibly more. “We've seen fishermen catch and release some crazy huge sturgeon there,” the owners shared. One wonders what detritus may have found repose in those waters. Lighthouse Keeper's Home For SaleIn my research I found a 1973 Oregonian real estate ad listing the lighthouse caretaker's home, a shop, and two acres offered at $39,000. Perhaps we can conclude this was the government liquidating obsolete structures, following lighthouse rebuilding and modernization?Adjusted for inflation that's about $280,000 in 2024 dollars. That may sound cheap to some now, but I suspect it would have required a unique buyer then. Here is another photo showing the bungalow in relation to the lighthouse from the early days, circa 1905. Looks like a peaceful homestead!Here is a closer look at the home—date unknown—but given the size of the trees in the background and what looks like a composite shingle roof, I'd guess the 1960's? Here it is today: The house burned down in the early 1990's. The current property owners say, “We've heard from one of the people involved who hiked out to see the place one day that a couple of teenagers were out there when they accidentally caught the place on fire. They tried to get the Sauvie Island Fire Department out there, who announced it wasn't their jurisdiction, and then the St Helens/Columbia County services also claimed it wasn't theirs. They finally got their fathers out there to try to put it out but at that point it was too late.”The trail to the lighthouse today leads by a discretely positioned shipping container near the freestanding chimney and foundation of the old home. It is still private property. The current owners have a website about the lighthouse and environs at warriorrock.org. Much to my surprise and delight, one of them is a musician, sound artist, composer, and educator. So cool!St. Helens Shipbuilding Company, Island Lumber CompanyMany derelict features of post-Euro-American settlement human activity can still be found all around the point: pilings, bricks, concrete, rotting wood and rusting pipe. The pilings on Warrior Point represent the remains of the Island Lumber Company, part of a large complex of lumber industries located on the northern part of Sauvie Island and directly across Multnomah Channel at St. Helens during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Sawmills were established as early as the 1850s in St. Helens. By 1874, Charles and James Muckle operated a mill in that city and owned interests in nearby timber. In 1904 the mill burned and in 1909 the Charles R. McCormick Company bought the site and constructed a new mill. The new mill proved to be extremely productive. To accommodate larger ships than the schooners, that were the most common means of shipping, Charles McCormick formed the St. Helens Shipbuilding Company at a site just south of Warrior Point on Sauvie Island. After the acquisition of additional timber lands, he and his brother Hamlin formed the St. Helens Timber Company in 1912. In 1920, the McCormicks contracted to produce 250 million feet of railroad ties. To fill the order they formed the Island Lumber Company and built a mill and a shipping pier at Warrior Point on Sauvie Island. (ifish.net)One of the most storied ships turned out by the St. Helens Shipbuilding Company was the Wapama, launched in 1915, surviving almost 100 years before being dismantled in 2013. Once part of the National Maritime Museum in San Francisco, it was the last example of some 225 wooden steam schooners that served along the Pacific coast. The NMM still hosts a PDF of the Wapama brochure. Detail-oriented readers may recall it was Wapama that was involved in a collision that sunk the tug Cricket off Warrior Rock in 1927.Between 1912 and 1927 the St. Helens Shipbuilding Company on Sauvie Island just south of Warrior Point launched 42 wooden ships. (Wikipedia)ConclusionAnd so we come to an end in our learning and listening series in this place once called the Wapato Valley. Little more than 200 years ago it was the domain of the Chinookan people. Today it is a bustling corridor of commerce, industry, and recreation too. Here Sauvie Island Wildlife Area, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge and Shillapoo Wildlife Area create an aggregated wildlife conservation area on both sides of the Columbia measuring about 20,000 acres in total. In many ways, these lands are little changed.Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 2 is notably quieter than Part 1. In truth, the soundscape isn't particularly quiet here. It feels quiet, but there is a low frequency hum produced by I-5 and Hwy 30 that settles in here like a fog. I removed much of that with a low shelf EQ to approximate a less industrialized time. And, much like the nearby Oaks to Wetlands Trail Soundwalk yielded an anthropogenic alternative soundscape with Four Trains, I could have made a nautical version from the cut-outs here: Four Ships? Another time, perhaps.On the way back we hear the groaning of sea lions out in the middle of the river. This is a photo I snapped on a the opposite shore five days earlier. I love the sweetening of the acoustics at this distance. Thanks for joining me on this survey of sights, sounds and stories from the Wapato Valley!Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 1 is out now on all streaming services.Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 2 is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, December 20th.

Lieutenant Charles Hare was a young British naval officer who made an extraordinarily elaborate escape from a French prisoner-of-war camp during the Napoleonic Wars... with the help of his English Terrier dog. Captured at just 14, Hare spent years in captivity before devising an audacious plan to flee dressed in the uniform of a French customs officer. He took a convoluted 'trains, planes and automobiles' style journey up the Rhine, through Germany, to the Netherlands and finally back home to England, deceiving both locals and officials of his true identity.This tale of ingenuity and bravery was recently uncovered thanks to Hare's descendants, who recently handed over his disguise and firsthand account to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Curator Dr Katherine Gazzard regales Dan with the story in a world-exclusive story when he visited the museum to see the uniform for himself.You can see Hare's disguise and discover more about his story at a new exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and see it in our new History Hit documentary. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW' to watch it.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal PatmoreOther episodes mentioned in this episode:Thomas Cochrane: The Real Master and CommanderWe'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at ds.hh@historyhit.com.You can take part in our listener survey here.

In 1941, the SS Politician ran aground off Eriskay in the Scottish Hebrides Islands, carrying 260,000 bottles of whisky. As war rationing gripped Britain, Hebridean islanders saw the wreck as a godsend. Under cover of darkness, they salvaged thousands of bottles, hiding them in caves, haystacks, and peat bogs. A cat-and-mouse game ensued with customs officers who were determined to stop the whisky smuggling.  Dan is joined by Laura Boon-Williams, Lloyd's Register Foundation Senior Curator in Contemporary Maritime at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, who recounts the true story behind the beloved movie Whisky Galore and tells us about the spirit of this Hebridean community during wartime, merchant shipping in WII and why a seemingly endless supply of whiskey wasn't entirely a blessing.You can find out more about Lloyd's Register Foundation's history and its work that supports research, innovation and education to help the global community tackle the most pressing safety and risk challenges. Just go to https://hec.lrfoundation.org.uk/Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore. Peta Stamper is the production manager for this series, 'Ships that Made the British Empire'. 

Justin and Pete struggle with technology to try to get to the fixtures at 9am on release day and finally, more by luck than judgement, get to see the list of fixtures and provide their particular brand of idiocy where analysis should be!! Lots of advise for Jessie and others now planning a week long trip to Portsmouth in April plus good news for those hardy souls who braved the Plymouth rain on new years day and went to the National Maritime Museum!!! We grant you this may have niche appeal!! COYH!!This Podcast has been created and uploaded by Do Not Scratch Your Eyes. The views in this Podcast are not necessarily the views of talkSPORT.Huge thanks to all our Patreons:Chris Giannone,RichWFC2,Steve Holliman,Paul Fiander Turner,Sean Gourley,Lee Anselmo,John Parslow,Mark von Herkomer,Neil Silverstein,Steve Brown,Dave Lavender,Kasey Brown,Nipper Harrison,Boyd Mayover,Colin Payne,Paul Riley,Gary Wood,Karl Campion,Kevin Kremen,The Big Le – Bofski,Greg Theaker,Malcolm Williams,Bryan Edwards,Peter Ryan,Luka,John Thekanady - Ambassador of Dubai!!Jack Foster,Jason Rose,Michael Abrahams,Ian Bacon,Ken Green,Nick Nieuwland,Colin SmithAnt!!!!!Westlie WheelerRyan D!Dave Mullins,James McNamaraJim Cuthbert& PDF Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kraig from Voices from the Left Podcast and I discuss the brutal colonialism associated with distilling Rum. Part 1: Caribbean rum, slavery, and colonization Part 2: The Social Demographics and makeup of the rum industry Part 3: "Tiki" bars and the sexualization of Indigenous women (Caribbean, Polynesian, and more) Part 4: Solutions, moving forward, and decolonizing the spirit industry. Sources: ^ Emert, Phyllis (1995). Colonial triangular trade: an economy based on human misery. Carlisle, Massachusetts: Discovery Enterprises Ltd. ISBN 978-1-878668-48-6. OCLC 32840704. ^ Merritt, J. E. (1960). "The Triangular Trade". Business History. Informa UK Limited. 3 (1): 1–7. doi:10.1080/00076796000000012. ISSN 0007-6791. S2CID 153930643. ^ Gold, Susan Dudley (2006). United States V. Amistad: Slave Ship Mutiny. Marshall Cavendish. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-7614-2143-6. ^ Weber, Jacques. "La traite négrière nantaise de 1763 à 1793" (PDF). Centre national de la recherche scientifique (in French). ^ Vindt, Gérard; Consil, Jean-Michel (June 2013). "Nantes, Bordeaux et l'économie esclavagiste – Au XVIIIe siècle, les villes de Nantes et de Bordeaux profitent toutes deux de la "traite négrière" et de l'économie esclavagiste". Alternatives économiques. 325: 17–21. ^ Morgan, Kenneth (2007). Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 62. ISBN 9780191566271. Retrieved 16 October 2020. ^ Kowaleski-Wallace, A.P.o.E.E., Elizabeth (2006). The British slave trade and public memory. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231137140. ^ Liverpool and the Slave Trade, by Anthony Tibbles, Director of the Merseyside Maritime Museum ^ About.com: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Archived 2008-10-14 at the Wayback Machine. Accessed 6 November 2007. ^ "Triangular Trade". National Maritime Museum. Archived from the original on 25 November 2011. ^  Jump up to: a b c Curtis, Wayne (2006–2007). And a Bottle of Rum. New York: Three Rivers Press. pp. 117-119 ISBN 978-0-307-33862-4. Follow Kraig and the Voices from the Left Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/voices-from-the-left/id1697725294 As always, follow the 805UNCENSORED Podcast, we are on all the major social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok @805uncensoredpod. Questions/comments/guest suggestions/episode ideas? Email: 805uncensored@gmail.com Thank you so much for listening!

Mat visits the National Maritime Museum in London to explore six fascinating relics from the Battle of Trafalgar. Guiding him around the collection is senior curator, Rob Blyth.Topics discussed: A painting that shows Lord Nelson bleeding after his arm was amputated; a beautiful porcelain figurine that depicts 'Jack Tar', a typical sailor at the time of Trafalgar; a range of cannon projectiles that were used at the Battle of Trafalgar to smash enemy ships; the jacket that Lord Nelson was wearing when he was shot and killed at Trafalgar; mourning items associated with Britain's national grief when Nelson died; and Turner's famous painting depicting the battle.Presenter: Mat McLachlanGuest: Dr Robert BlythProducer: Jess StebnickiSubscribe via Patreon for exclusive bonus episodes, early access to all episodes, ad-free listening and special online events with Mat McLachlan! https://www.patreon.com/MMHistoryJoin one of our battlefield tours and walk in the footsteps of the Anzacs! Visit https://battlefields.com.au/ for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Isabella interviews Maya Wassell Smith, assistant curator of art at the National Maritime Museum and a PhD student at Cardiff University. The two discuss naval embroidery in all of its forms.Images and sources are available at @sewwhatpodcast on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. The podcast has a website, sewwhatpodcast.com.

We're on site this week at the new, fantastic exhibition of Women of the RNLI at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the RNLI. We talk to former Tower lifeboat station manager Janet, archivist Hayley Whiting, and photographer Jack Lowe about his amazing project to photograph every single lifeboat station in the UK. Join us as we find out more about this wonderful institution and Jack's fascinating project. The exhibition was curated by Royal Museums Greenwich's Laura Boon, Lloyd's Register Foundation Senior Curator: Contemporary Maritime and Aimee Mook, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Maritime Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In Conversation with the Shortlisted and Winning Photographers from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 15 The shortlisted and winning photographers of this competition were invited to a special Private View event in September 2023 where they could see the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. During the event, Royal Observatory astronomer Affelia recorded interviews with some of the photographers who were there to talk about their images and to ask for some advice about how to start taking beautiful photos of the night sky. This interview is with Miguel Claro, Angel Yu, and John White. Please be aware that you might hear some background noise from the event in the recordings below. If you'd like to see the exhibition yourself, it is open daily at the National Maritime Museum.

In Conversation with the Shortlisted and Winning Photographers from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 15. The shortlisted and winning photographers of this competition were invited to a special Private View event in September 2023 where they could see the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. During the event, Royal Observatory astronomer Affelia recorded interviews with some of the photographers who were there to talk about their images and to ask for some advice about how to start taking beautiful photos of the night sky. This interview is with Josh Dury, Peter Larkin, Dario Giannobile, and Katie McGuiness Please be aware that you might hear some background noise from the event in the recordings below. If you'd like to see the exhibition yourself, it is open daily at the National Maritime Museum.

In Conversation with the Shortlisted and Winning Photographers from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 15. The shortlisted and winning photographers of this competition were invited to a special Private View event in September 2023 where they could see the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. During the event, Royal Observatory astronomer Affelia recorded interviews with some of the photographers who were there to talk about their images and to ask for some advice about how to start taking beautiful photos of the night sky. This interview is with Andre Vilhena, Martin Lewis, and Lorenzo Ranieri. Please be aware that you might hear some background noise from the event in the recordings below. If you'd like to see the exhibition yourself, it is open daily at the National Maritime Museum.

In Conversation with the Shortlisted and Winning Photographers from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 15. The shortlisted and winning photographers of this competition were invited to a special Private View event in September 2023 where they could see the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. During the event, Royal Observatory astronomer Jess, with help from members of the Astronomy Ambassadors Group, recorded interviews with some of the photographers who were there to talk about their images and to ask for some advice about how to start taking beautiful photos of the night sky. This interview is with entrants from the Young Competition, Benjamin Lawler, Feargus Casbolt, and Harry Johnson. They're being interviewed by members of the Astronomy Ambassadors Group - Petra, Varuni, and Lizzie. Please be aware that you might hear some background noise from the event in the recordings below. If you'd like to see the exhibition yourself, it is open daily at the National Maritime Museum.

In Conversation with the Shortlisted and Winning Photographers from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 15. The shortlisted and winning photographers of this competition were invited to a special Private View event in September 2023 where they could see the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. During the event, Royal Observatory astronomer Affelia recorded interviews with some of the photographers who were there to talk about their images and to ask for some advice about how to start taking beautiful photos of the night sky. This interview is with Derek Horlock, Joao Yordanov Serrhalheiro, and Jonathon Lodge. Please be aware that you might hear some background noise from the event in the recordings below. If you'd like to see the exhibition yourself, it is open daily at the National Maritime Museum.

In this episode we explore the extraordinary life of Frerik Henrik Af Chapman, the man considered the grandfather of naval architecture. Born in Gothenburg in 1721 to immigrant English parents, his father served in the Swedish navy before becoming the manager of a shipyard in Gothenburg. His mother was the daughter of a London shipwright. Frerderik was therefore born into a life of ship design and construction and he was just ten when he designed his first vessel. By 23 he ran his own shipyard maintaining and repairing Swedish East Indiamen. This was a period when the science of shipbuilding reached new heights and Chapman, uniquely a mathematician and a shipwright, led the way. Mathematicians who studied shipbuilding lacked the practical skill to implement their own ideas; while shipwrights lacked the mathematical understanding. Frederik was the first person who combined those two skills. He made it possible to predetermine and assess mathematically different attributes of vessels such as stability and sailing qualities. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Jonas Hedberg, curator at Sweden's National Maritime Museum in Stockholm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The third episode in our mini series on Maritime Sweden is a tour of Sweden's National Maritime Museum in Stockholm: Sjöhistorisa Museet. Listen in as Dr Sam Willis is guided around the museum by its curator, Jonas Hedberg. We hear about the founding of the purpose-built maritime museum in the 1930s; explore the extraordinary collection of ship models; artefacts including a magnificent figurehead from mid 1750s; stories of migrants to Sweden after the Second World War; a rail ferry that once transported Lenin across the Baltic; and a Swedish Royal Yacht from the eighteenth century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. In this new monthly slot, Rubber Cheese CEO Paul Marden joins me to discuss different digital related topics. In this episode, we're discussing personalisation and what attractions can do to make their websites feel more tailored to their audience. You can subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue. Kelly Molson: Hello, hello. Welcome back to the podcast. Paul Marden: Hello again. Good, isn't it? Back here for a third time. Kelly Molson: It is good. You're lucky. Right, let's start the podcast as we do with this one. What attraction have you visited most recently and what did you love about it? Paul Marden: Yeah, I was pretty lucky the other day because I went to the National Maritime Museum, because I'm a Trustee of Kids in Museums and we had our Family Friendly Museum Awards and we held it in their lecture theatre at the Maritime Museum up in Greenwich. And I'd been to the Greenwich Museums before. I'd been to the top of the hill where the observatory is, but I've never been to the bottom of the hill, which is where Maritime Museum is. And so I'm just there with all the great and good of all of the museums around the country that have been shortlisted for the awards, which was brilliant. Paul Marden: But the bit that I really loved was that I was there in the daytime during the midweek, so peak school trip season, and it was just amazing to be in this place with all these school kids there doing their school trips, which is something I'm really passionate about, the value of those school trips. It was something that really got the kids lost out on when COVID hit and everybody was working online and then they went back to schools, but the schools had to be really careful about what they did and there were no school trips. That's such a magical part of being in primary school that they were just robbed of. So seeing all those kids in that amazing place was just wonderful. I got to rub shoulders with the great and the good. Paul Marden: I met some Skip the Queue alumni at the event as well, and I had a lovely cup of tea and a piece of cake in the cafe with our Project Manager, Becs. Did you imagine a better day? Kelly Molson: No, it's a perfect day. I was just thinking as you were talking about the school trips, it's like a rite of passage at school, isn't it, to be walking around a museum with a clipboard to draw a picture of it? Go and find X and draw a picture of it. I just got really vivid memories of doing that . Paul Marden: They were all just herring around, doing exactly that and loving life and buying their little rubbers in the shop and things like that. Kelly Molson: You should collect rubbers, kids. All the cool people do. Okay, I need to give a big shout out to National Trust. We are really lucky where we live. So we've got like a triangle of National Trust venues near us. So we've got Wimpole, Ickworth and Anglesey Abbey, all within like 25 minutes, half an hour, a little bit longer for Ickworth. Each one of them is incredible. They all have a different adventure. They've got great play areas, beautiful historic houses and beautiful walks. And we have spent a lot of time in the last two years at National Trust venues, walking, pushing the pram. But now Edie's toddling around, we're into the activity areas and all of them are phenomenal. Wimpole has just redone their outdoor play area, which we're yet to visit. Kelly Molson: We're just waiting for a dry day to get back over to that one. But it's just the membership. So I think the membership is such superb value for money. Paul Marden: It really is.Kelly Molson: I cannot speak more highly of it. It is such good value for money and we get 45678 times the amount of value from it every single year we have this membership, so much so that we gift it to people as well. Kelly Molson: We were really lucky. We got given some money for a wedding gift and we said, rather than think when people give you money, it's lovely, but you can put it in the bank and you forget about it. Or it just gets spent on stuff. And were like, “Right, if we get given money, we'll spend it on a thing and we can say we bought this thing with it.” And so that we bought the National Trust membership with it. Paul Marden: That's a cracking idea. Kelly Molson: Yeah, it was really good. Really good idea. But then it's such good value that we've then bought membership for my parents. Paul Marden: Really?Kelly Molson: Yeah. So I think it was like a joint. I think Father's Day and my mum's birthday are quite close together, so it might have been a joint one for that. They go and they go on their own and then they go and then they take Edie as well. And it's absolutely brilliant. So, yeah, well done, National Trust. Well done, Wimpole. Especially because pigs. Someone, the tiny person in my house, is very happy about pigs there. I don't mean myself, I mean Edie. And also, I just want to give a big shout out to one of the volunteers. I'm really sorry I didn't get the volunteer's name at Wimpole. He is one of the volunteers in the farm. Kelly Molson: I am a little bit frightened of horses. I think they're beautiful but really big. I saw an old next to the neighbour get kicked by a horse once. Paul Marden: You've literally been scarred for life. Kelly Molson: There's a block up there, but I'm a little bit frightened of horses. And there's a huge Shire horse at Wimpole who's a big old gentle giant. I think he's called Jack. But I am a bit frightened and I don't want that fear to rub off on Edie. And so I very bravely took Edie over to meet the Shire horse. But the volunteer was wonderful. This guy know told us loads of stuff about the horse and he was really great with Edie and she managed to stroke his nose and even I managed to stroke Jack's nose. So, yeah, thank you man whose name I didn't get. It was a really lovely experience and you helped put me at ease and my daughter at ease. So there you go. National Trust and the value of volunteers. Paul Marden: And National Trust volunteers, we've talked about this before. I've been to a couple that are local to me and they just tell the most amazing stories and they engage people in a way that to be so passionate about the thing that you care about and that you want to do that for free to help people to enjoy their experience is just amazing. And there are some, I mean, there are diamonds all over the place in all the museums and places that we visit, but there's plenty of them. When you work that Natural Trust membership, you get to meet a lot of volunteers, don't you? And they are amazing.Kelly Molson: Working it hard. Okay, let's get on to what we're going to discuss today. So we are talking about personalisation and what attractions can do to make their websites feel more personal. So this is an interesting one and I think that we've probably got to put our hands up and make a bit of an apology here. Very few people who took part in the 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Survey actually implement personalisation, but there's a lot of evidence that personalisation improves conversion rates. So there's some stats that I want to read out from the report. Only 6% of respondents personalised their website experience for customers, yet 85% of respondents thought personalisation was highly important. So, question for you, why do you think so many people think it's important, but so few are actually implementing it? Paul Marden: This is where we hold our hands up, isn't it? And we say, I think the answer to that is because we didn't ask the question properly. I've touched base with it. There was a very small set of people, as you say, 6% of people said that they were personalising their websites. But the language that we used in the question was a little bit confusing. And when I reached out to a handful of that 6%, they were like, "Oh, no, that's not what we thought you meant. What we thought you meant was that". So one person said to me, "You could personalise your experience at the venue by buying different things, not personalise the website experience." Yeah. And when you read the language of the question again with that answer in your head, it's obvious why they answered it in the way that they did. Paul Marden: So there's a lesson to be learned there about trialing the questionnaire, making sure that people understand what it is that we're saying and that we agree with the language of what we've used. The fact is, I think a lot of people didn't understand us. So the answers that we got back, the disparity, is clearly confusion based. But even if weren't confused, even if we had the data, my instinct is that there would be a big difference between the two. And that boils down to the fact that I think that personalisation is hard to do and that actually the reason why a lot of people aren't doing it is because it's hard and costly in some cases. But we need to get into the guts of that and understand why. Kelly Molson: Okay, so lesson learned for next year. We need to give more clarity over the questions that we ask. So thanks for the feedback, everybody. We will do that. What do we actually mean by personalisation then? Paul Marden: Yeah, that's a good question. I think that what we mean by personalisation is developing the website in a way that means that you show different contents to different audience members depending on different things. There's lots of different ways in which you can do that. There's a very simple perspective which is around not automatically showing different content to different people, but writing content for your different audiences and making that easily discoverable. It doesn't have to be technically complex. Paul Marden: Yeah. It's really about writing the right content for the right people and making it so that they can get from where they are to where they want to get to and get that right answer. Most of us do that intuitively. Most of us, when we're writing content as marketers, we do personalise the content to the end audience, even if we're not doing that in an automated way. Kelly Molson: I think with this, though, my interpretation of it is the next level onto that, which is, that's true personalisation, because I think those things, yes, that's a very simple way of looking at it, but that for me is not enough when it comes to how we answer this question. So it's the tracking behaviour and showing personal content that to me truly personalises an experience. I can think of things that we've done in the past in terms of tracking where someone tracking the IP of the person that's looking at the website and offering them up content that is in English, UK English or in American English for example. Paul Marden: Absolutely. So it could be about time of day, it's trite. I'm not going to convert somebody but saying good morning, good afternoon, good evening, based on where they are. We did another site a few years ago which showed videos of an experience in the daytime or an experience at nighttime, depending on when you were looking at the website, and then you could switch in between them, which was pretty cool. Kelly Molson: I like that. Paul Marden: Yeah. So you could do time of day, you could do location, like you say, interesting is understanding, building an understanding of somebody fitting an audience profile based on what they've looked at across the site, which gets a little bit creepy, doesn't it? If you're tracking and you use that tracking information without lots of care, you could look really creepy. But if you use it really carefully, then you can adapt the content of the site based on the more that somebody looks at the Schools section of your website and they look at news articles that are related to schools, maybe they're a teacher or maybe they're interested in running a school trip to your venue and you can adapt the recommendations that you make to them based on that understanding, that they show more interest in the educational aspects of what you're doing. Kelly Molson: So this leads us to really to what some of the benefits are. And ultimately, I think the more personalised the site is, the easier it gets for users to meet their needs. You're kind of getting them from the start to their goal quicker and hopefully makes their lives easier as well. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So I found some data. No, as you know, this came out of the report. Actually 80% of consumers. This was a stat that we pulled out in the report. Kelly Molson: It's from Hubspot. Paul Marden: Yeah. 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from brands that offer a personalised experience. So from that perspective, personalised sites are more likely to convert. There was other stats that we didn't put into the report itself, Boston Consulting Group, found that brands that create personalised experiences, combining digital with customer data, so that the true personalisation you were talking about, increased revenue by 6% to 10%. That's pretty impressive. Kelly Molson: It is pretty impressive. But then that brings us to risk, doesn't it? And that kind of creepy aspect of this and whether it's. Is it okay, hon? Paul Marden: Yeah, I mean, the obvious one is privacy isn't know. We live in an age where people value their privacy and there's laws around that as well. So in the UK we've got GDPR, there are laws all over the world in relation to personal information and tracking somebody's behaviour around your site, what they do and what they look at and being able to associate that back to an individual themselves is definitely data that would be in the scope of the Data Protection Act in the UK and GDPR across Europe. So you have to be really careful about what data you're collecting, how you attribute it back to a natural human, and then what do you do to protect that data? Kelly Molson: And then you've got complexity of managing multiple sites, managing large volumes and multiple sources of data on top of that as well. Paul Marden: I alluded to that earlier on as my kind of. The reason why I think a lot of people don't do this is when you get into the true personalisation, when you're managing a website, there's a lot of content on there, you've got to think about what everybody needs. You got lots of people in the organisation wanting their content put onto the website. You're the editor and you're responsible for that thing. And then somebody says to you, "I think it's a bright idea. We've got twelve audiences and we want to have personalised content for all of those audiences.". And now you don't have one website to manage, you've got twelve websites to manage. Paul Marden: And when it goes wrong for one particular person, when the CEO is looking at the website and it shows them something really weird and they report it to the editor and the editor is like, “Yeah, how do I know what it was that went wrong? Because I don't have one website. I've got twelve websites that I've got to manage.” The level of complexity and the effort that you go into this, if you're not careful, if you're not doing this in a sensible way, it can become quite hard to manage and get your head around. Kelly Molson: I'm just thinking of the horror of trying to support that from an agency perspective as well. When you've got support tickets coming in and the support ticket from the client is. So this person is not happy because they've seen content that isn't okay for them or oh God. Paul Marden: Yeah, if not managed properly, you got this potential explosion of content. You've also got the potential for all of that personal data about the people that are going around the website to be trapped. So now you've got to manage a load of data in volumes that you'd never really thought of before. Where does the customer data come from? If you've got, do we want to show personalised information for people that are members? Where do we hold our membership information? Do we hold that in a CRM system? Okay, so now we need to plumb the CRM system into the website so the website knows if the visitor is a member or not. Do we show different information to somebody that is not a member but they have visited before or how do we know that? Paul Marden: Oh, we need to plumb in data from the ticketing system now. And this can be amazing. And that's how you arrive at that high conversion rate, is that you've enriched the experience with loads of knowledge about the person. It's not like somebody's walking into the gates of the place and you know nothing about them. All of a sudden they're walking into your website, they're interacting with your website and they're not just the same as everyone else, they're special and everybody wants to be special, but to get them to that special place you have to know a lot about them. It can be amazing when it's done well, but it's not trivial. Kelly Molson: So we always at this point, talk about who is doing it well. And this is a really difficult one. Tricky one, because ultimately we haven't asked the question properly in the survey. And because of the nature of personalisation, we don't know who's doing it. We don't know really. So what would be great is if you are an attraction, listening to this episode and you're out there and you are doing it well, we'd really love to talk to you. So we have these little slots that we have between Paul and I. We've got a load of things that we can talk about, but if there's an attraction out there that is doing personalisation really well, we can open up one of these slots for you to come on and have a chat with us and just talk about some of the things that you're doing. Kelly Molson: We'd love to hear some really good success stories for this and some case studies. So yeah, feel free to drop me an email and kelly@rubbercheese.com and let me know. So skipping over the fact that we've got no one to talk about who does it well. Hopefully we will soon. What are the steps that people can take? So what's the starting point? If you are thinking about personalisation, what does that journey look like? Paul Marden: Yeah, first of all, you need to understand the audience, don't you? Or the audience is. And just talking from our own perspective and our process that we follow, that's an early part of the kind of research that we do when we're building a new site is to dig into who the audience is and trying to understand them in as many ways as you possibly can. There's loads of stuff written about this online. There's some brilliant examples that I've looked at before far TfL, who share their audience personas and how much detail they've gone into understanding who the different people are that interact with the TfL website and what their goals are and what makes them special from the perspective of an attraction. You could think of families with young kids that are coming. Paul Marden: You could be thinking of maybe if you were a museum, the people that are running school trips, the teachers and so forth, that could be running it. Maybe the volunteers for your organisation or another audience member that you need to think about and understand who they are, what they look like in terms of their demographic information, the way they think and what they do and how they interact with the world, markers that you could use to be able to help target that. So figuring out that audience persona for each of the people that you want to target, I think, is a crucial job.Kelly Molson: Definitely the starting point. And sometimes that's done internally and sometimes we support with that externally. I think then you have to kind of think about the tools that you've got, what is available to you and how you can use them. And we focus on three main ones at Rubber Cheese, don't we? Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. So we focus on WordPress, Umbraco and HubSpot. And it's interesting because each of them have different functionalities in terms of personalisation. And it's been weird, isn't it, to try and think about the tool before you think about what you want to do, but really it's about not trying to put the cart before the horse. If you know what the tool can do, then you can figure out how you can use it. Kelly Molson: Yeah, and I think from a cost perspective as well, it's thinking about what you already have in place that you can manipulate rather than starting from scratch. Paul Marden: HubSpot is a good one to talk about because straight out of the box it's the most capable in terms of personalisation. And it's a bit obscure because a lot of people think of HubSpot as being a CRM package. They don't think of it as being a content management system website tool, but it has that functionality and that's kind of evolved over the last five years into a fully formed content management system.Paul Marden: But because you've got this bolted together CRM and content management system, they've obviously spotted that an opportunity for them and they've put those two things together. And so straight out of the box you can build out personalisation, you can create these what they call smart rules. To say in this section, I want to show this content dependent on this particular factor. So that's pretty awesome to get that straight out of the box I think. Kelly Molson: I struggle to get my head around that just because I do view HubSpot as our CRM. I'm in it constantly. It's my source of truth for all of my clients and networking contacts and suppliers. It's where my sales pipeline is. I can't get my head around it. It's a content management system as well. Paul Marden: Completely. But you can think of, when you're building out a website and it doesn't have to be built out in HubSpot itself. Sorry. In HubSpot's own content management system you can still do a lot of this using their CRM system bolted onto other content management systems. But you can create contacts as somebody becomes a real person. Then you could create that contact inside HubSpot and use the knowledge about that person on the website. You can use the deal functionality inside HubSpot to track when somebody has bought tickets for a place and when they've actually completed the deal. You end up with lots and lots of data going through HubSpot when you do all of that order information going through there. Paul Marden: But that's how you enrich it with the ability to target your existing customers with different content to prospective customers that have never bought from you before. Kelly Molson: What about Umbraco and WordPress? Because this is not something that they do like out of the box. Is it off the shelf? Paul Marden: No, absolutely. So Umbraco doesn't have it straight out of the box. There is a really capable personalisation system called uMarketingSuite which you can buy. It's like annual subscription product that bolts into Umbraco itself. It's been built so that when you're in there and managing all of your audience personas and the content that you want to adapt, it's all in that one package. So once you've got it in there, it does feel like it's all Umbraco because it's been designed in a really neat way. The challenge is you've got to buy it. It's a paid for add on, but the benefit that you get is well worth the investment. But it's not a cheap investment to make in that tooling. And also there's elements of the site needs to be built with that in mind. Kelly Molson: You can't just plug it on at the end and hope for the best. You've got to think about that long. Paul Marden: No, it's not a plug it on. You can retrospectively add it into a site. Yeah, but it will probably cost you more to add it afterwards than if you'd have thought about it at the beginning and done it. So it definitely can be added on later on. But if you think about it in advance and you do it all at the same time, the total cost of the project will probably be lower. Kelly Molson: Okay, so that's a good one to think about. If you are planning new website projects for the new year, you are really happy with the Umbraco platform. There's something to have a conversation around that. And then WordPress plugins. Paul Marden: Exactly. So as with everything WordPress related, hundreds of people have solved this problem. So there are lots and lots of plugins out there. There's a couple that I would mention that came up when I was doing some research around this. There's one called if so dynamic content. There's one called Logic Hop, both of which enable you to adapt your content based on certain rules that you define. So, pretty much like the smart rule functionality that's in HubSpot, you can achieve that natively inside WordPress once you add these plugins. And the cost of those plugins was negligible. Yeah, you're talking under 100 quid for a year worth of setting that up. Kelly Molson: Well, that's good to know. So what are we talking about in terms of budgets for stuff then? So there's effort involved in understanding your audiences first. So that's going to be something that you talk to your agency or you bring in an external or you do internally. You carry out your persona work, you really understand who your audience is. That cost is really variable. It could be workshop based. You might have all of this information internally anyway that you just kind of need the time to pull it all together. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. And you can imagine that could be a day's effort to just pull together a few things that already exist. It could be several weeks worth of effort spread over a longer period of time. I was having a chat with Matt, our Creative Director, about this the other day and literally just scribbled on a piece of paper. But he was like, “Paul, you need to understand this.” At the one end of the spectrum you could spend a little time researching this stuff. At the other end of the spectrum you could spend a lot of time. And what do you get when you go in between the two? You make less assumptions the further down the road you go. So if you can deal with kind of a minimal research and making some broad assumptions, then that's a sensible thing to do.Paul Marden: But if you want the confidence of knowing that you're not making too many assumptions and there's lots of data underlying the things that you're saying, then obviously you need to invest more effort into that research to be able to find that out. Yeah, kind of obvious, but it helped when you drew me that kind of framer. Kelly Molson: So let's look at the tools then. So let's do HubSpot. We talked about HubSpot first. What's the cost involved in that? Because my assumption, I mean, I've used the free version of HubSpot for years. There's a paid version of HubSpot. My assumption was the paid version of HubSpot was really expensive. Paul Marden: So costing HubSpot is a complex thing because there's lots of different variables involved. There's lots of features. The more features you add, the more it costs. But in order to do this personalisation you need a pro version of their content management system and you're looking at about 350 quid a month to be able to do that. So what's that, about four and a half, 5000 pounds a year to buy that in? That is not just for that feature, that is for the whole of that HubSpot content management system and all of its hosting included as well. And it is top grade, highly secure or highly available infrastructure that you get bolted in that. So the cost of personalisation is not just the 350 quid a month, that is, the all in to get that pro package is 350 quid a month. Kelly Molson: And then there'll be dev costs on top of that to implement it. Paul Marden: Yeah, to a certain extent, actually a lot of the personalisation, because it's core to HubSpot, you can achieve a lot in a normally designed and built HubSpot site and then just manage the content in that. So let's say, you've got a panel where you want to show a particular piece of content that says, "Hey, you're back again." Because you're a returning user, you wouldn't necessarily need a developer to be able to make that available to you. Those smart rules would be built in by the content management system. So there's obviously going to be things that you want to do that. You will need to have a developer to be able to do that. Kelly Molson: You need someone that understands logic. This is not a job for me. Paul Marden: Well, in the right hands, you don't need a developer to be able to do a lot of the personalisation in HubSpot. Kelly Molson: All right, what about Umbraco? Paul Marden: Yeah, there are some free tools. There's something called personalisation groups. But if you want to go for uMarketingSuite, which I think is where you're getting into, really see it would be a proper personalisation territory with lots of great functionality, you're looking at about 400 quid a month for the package to be added into your Umbraco instance. So that's not comparing apples with apples when we look at the HubSpot cost, because that was an all in cost for the whole of the platform for HubSpot. Whereas for Umbraco uMarketingSuite is 400 quid a month to add it to your instance. And that depends on the amount of traffic on your site that does vary. Kelly Molson: And then WordPress is cheapest chips in comparison. So plugins, you're looking at costs of around about 150 pounds per year depending on what one you go to. Obviously you've either got somebody internally that can integrate that for you or you've got your dev costs on top of that. But if you've already got an existing website in WordPress, then actually could be something relatively inexpensive that you could start to try out. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. And then on top of that you've got other personalisation systems that you could plug into any of these systems with your kind of Lamborghini style sets of functionality. These are starting costs for the packages we're talking about. Yeah, we're talking 150 quid a year for WordPress, but that would be basic personalisation. Kelly Molson: Yeah. Okay, good chat. So just to reiterate what we said earlier, sorry, we were idiots about the question and of course some confusion. Apologies, we'll do much better next time. But now you've listened to this episode, if you do have a story to share and you are doing some really interesting things, we would love to give you the platform to share that. So do drop me a line, kelly@rubbercheese.com and we will make that happen. All right, great. Same time next month. Paul Marden: Awesome. Kelly Molson:  Thanks for listening to Skip The Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

We return to the shipwrecked crew of the Lucette. After their yacht was sunk by killer whales, the Robertsons have failed to flag down a passing ship. Now, with just a raft and a dinghy to carry them, the castaways must summon their resilience and focus on Plan B: navigating six hundred miles back to dry land… You can see the Robertsons' tiny dinghy at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth, UK: nmmc.co.uk/ A Noiser production, written by Joe Viner. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started with a 7-day free trial. Or, if you're on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's one of the all-time, epic survival stories. In 1971, Douglas Robertson is just a teenager when he and his family embark on the trip of a lifetime. Their aim is to sail around the globe. But when their small yacht is sunk in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, their dream of circumnavigation turns into a nightmare of self-preservation. The Robertsons must stick together and battle extraordinary adversity as a family. But will it be enough to see them through? You can see the Robertsons' tiny dinghy at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth, UK: nmmc.co.uk/ A Noiser production, written by Joe Viner. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started with a 7-day free trial. Or, if you're on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An Introduction to the Blue Humanities (Routledge, 2023) is the first textbook to explore the many ways humans engage with water, utilizing literary, cultural, historical, and theoretical connections and ecologies to introduce students to the history and theory of water-centric thinking. Comprised of multinational texts and materials, each chapter will provide readers with a range of primary and secondary sources, offering a fresh look at the major oceanic regions, salt and freshwater geographies, and the physical properties of water that characterize the Blue Humanities. Each chapter engages with carefully-chosen primary texts, including frequently-taught works such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Homer's The Odyssey, and Luis Vaz de Camões' The Lusiads, to provide the perfect pedagogy for students to develop an understanding of the Blue Humanities chapter by chapter.  Readers will gain insight into new trends in intellectual culture and the long histories of humans thinking with water, ranging across the many coastlines of the World Ocean to Pacific clouds, Mediterranean lakes, Caribbean swamps, Arctic glaciers, Southern Ocean rainstorms, Atlantic groundwater, and Indian Ocean rivers. Providing new avenues for future thinking and investigation of the Blue Humanities, this volume will be ideal for both undergraduate and graduate courses engaging with the environmental humanities and oceanic literature. Steve Mentz is a Professor of English at St. John's University in New York City. His academic expertise includes environmental criticism, the blue humanities, Shakespeare studies, early modern European poetry, and critical theory. He has published five single-author books, including Ocean (2020), Break Up the Anthropocene (2019), and Shipwreck Modernity (2015). He has edited or co-edited six other volumes, published many chapters and articles in scholarly journals and collections, and organized exhibitions and symposia on blue humanities topics. His research has been funded by the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the John Carter Brown Library, the National Maritime Museum in London, and other institutions. He received his Ph.D. in English from Yale University in 2000. Scott T. Erich is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the Graduate Center, CUNY. His dissertation, "Taming the Sea: Property, Rights, and the Extractive Seascape of Southeastern Arabia," is an ethnographic and historical examination of how fishermen, local rulers, colonial officials, and private companies claim rights to oceanic “territory” and extract marine natural resources – including pearls, fish, sponges, and oil – from the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. He is a recipient of the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award and the Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant. Previously, Scott was a Visiting Scholar at the American University of Sharjah, U.A.E., and a Fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs in Muscat, Oman. He has worked at the University of Chicago, the Middle East Institute, and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center. Currently, he is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Baruch College, and a Community Reef Ambassador with the Billion Oyster Project. Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

An Introduction to the Blue Humanities (Routledge, 2023) is the first textbook to explore the many ways humans engage with water, utilizing literary, cultural, historical, and theoretical connections and ecologies to introduce students to the history and theory of water-centric thinking. Comprised of multinational texts and materials, each chapter will provide readers with a range of primary and secondary sources, offering a fresh look at the major oceanic regions, salt and freshwater geographies, and the physical properties of water that characterize the Blue Humanities. Each chapter engages with carefully-chosen primary texts, including frequently-taught works such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Homer's The Odyssey, and Luis Vaz de Camões' The Lusiads, to provide the perfect pedagogy for students to develop an understanding of the Blue Humanities chapter by chapter.  Readers will gain insight into new trends in intellectual culture and the long histories of humans thinking with water, ranging across the many coastlines of the World Ocean to Pacific clouds, Mediterranean lakes, Caribbean swamps, Arctic glaciers, Southern Ocean rainstorms, Atlantic groundwater, and Indian Ocean rivers. Providing new avenues for future thinking and investigation of the Blue Humanities, this volume will be ideal for both undergraduate and graduate courses engaging with the environmental humanities and oceanic literature. Steve Mentz is a Professor of English at St. John's University in New York City. His academic expertise includes environmental criticism, the blue humanities, Shakespeare studies, early modern European poetry, and critical theory. He has published five single-author books, including Ocean (2020), Break Up the Anthropocene (2019), and Shipwreck Modernity (2015). He has edited or co-edited six other volumes, published many chapters and articles in scholarly journals and collections, and organized exhibitions and symposia on blue humanities topics. His research has been funded by the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the John Carter Brown Library, the National Maritime Museum in London, and other institutions. He received his Ph.D. in English from Yale University in 2000. Scott T. Erich is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the Graduate Center, CUNY. His dissertation, "Taming the Sea: Property, Rights, and the Extractive Seascape of Southeastern Arabia," is an ethnographic and historical examination of how fishermen, local rulers, colonial officials, and private companies claim rights to oceanic “territory” and extract marine natural resources – including pearls, fish, sponges, and oil – from the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. He is a recipient of the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award and the Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant. Previously, Scott was a Visiting Scholar at the American University of Sharjah, U.A.E., and a Fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs in Muscat, Oman. He has worked at the University of Chicago, the Middle East Institute, and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center. Currently, he is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Baruch College, and a Community Reef Ambassador with the Billion Oyster Project. Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners' feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Women in the History of Science brings together primary sources that highlight women's involvement in scientific knowledge production around the world. Drawing on texts, images and objects, each primary source is accompanied by an explanatory text, questions to prompt discussion, and a bibliography to aid further research. Arranged by time period, covering 1200 BCE to the twenty-first century, and across 12 inclusive and far-reaching themes, this book is an invaluable companion to students and lecturers alike in exploring women's history in the fields of science, technology, mathematics, and medicine. While women are too often excluded from traditional narratives of the history of science, this book centres on the voices and experiences of women across a range of domains of knowledge. By questioning our understanding of what science is, where it happens, and who produces scientific knowledge, this reader is an aid to liberating the curriculum within schools and universities. In this episode, Professor Joe Cain talks with the sourcebook's FIVE co-editors. Each recently completed a PhD in UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies. We talk about the book, how readers might use it in teaching, what their favourite chapters are, and how they're using their own skills to improve the subject of history for everyone.   Book information Women in the History of Science: A sourcebook Edited by Hannah Wills, Sadie Harrison, Erika Jones, Rebecca Martin, and Farrah Lawrence-Mackey 2023 UCL Press ISBN 9781800084155 Open Access PDF Free Download; Print also available https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/211143   Featuring Interviewees Hannah Wills is R&D Producer at Royal Holloway, University of London. https://royalholloway.academia.edu/HannahWills   Sadie Harrison is Honorary Research Associate at the Department of Science and Technology Studies, UCL and works in the environment sector.   Erika Lynn Jones is Curator of Navigation and Oceanography at Royal Museums, Greenwich.  https://erika-jones.org   Farrah Lawrence-Mackey is re-training to practice law.   Rebecca Martin has been Research Fellow in the Centre for History in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Caird Research Fellow at National Maritime Museum, Royal Museums Greenwich. https://dr-rebecca-martin.com   Each also is an Honorary Research Associate in UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS).   Host Professor Joe Cain, UCL Professor of History and Philosophy of Biology https://ucl.ac.uk/sts/cain   Music credits Music credits “Rollin At 5,” by Kevin MacLeod https://filmmusic.io/song/5000-rollin-at-5 “Silly Intro,” by Alexander Nakarada https://filmmusic.io/song/4786-silly-intro   Podcast information WeAreSTS is a production of the Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at University College London (UCL). To find out more, or to leave feedback about the show: https://ucl.ac.uk/sts/podcast  

1666 was a watershed year for England. An outbreak of the Great Plague, the eruption of the second Dutch War, and the devastating Great Fire of London all struck the country in rapid succession and with devastating repercussions. Shedding light on these dramatic events and their context, historian Rebecca Rideal reveals an unprecedented period of terror and triumph. Based in original archival research drawing on little-known sources, 1666 opens with the fiery destruction of London before taking readers on a thrilling journey through a crucial turning point in English history as seen through the eyes of an extraordinary cast of historical characters. Bio: Rebecca Rideal is a historian, a bestselling author, award-winning producer, and the director of the history festival, HistFest. As a historian, she specializes in the early modern period, the Stuart Dynasty, the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the history of plague, and historical true crime. Her first nonfiction book, 1666: Plague, War and Hellfire, was published by John Murray (UK) and St Martin's Press (US). She has contributed a chapter to the National Maritime Museum's Tudor and Stuart Seafarers and is currently working on her second work of narrative nonfiction, God's Throne. Rebecca spent over a decade working in specialist factual television where she developed and produced a wide range of programming, including Bloody Tales of the Tower, Adventurer's Guide to Britain, Escape from Nazi Death Camp, and the triple Emmy award-winning series, David Attenborough's First Life. For Investigation Discovery she has produced and written the Signal award-winning true crime podcast Mind of a Monster. She also produces and hosts the critically acclaimed historical podcast series, Killing Time, as well as the medical history podcast series, Sick to Death. Rebecca has written regularly for press, with articles featured in the Guardian, New Statesman, Prospect and BBC History Magazine. She has also featured as a contributor in London: 1666 (BBC), A Stitch in Time (BBC), The Private Lives of Monarchs (Channel 5), The Great Fire of London (Channel 5) and the radio documentaries The Invention of Great Britain and The Invention of the Netherlands (BBC Radio 4). Website - https://rebeccarideal.co.uk/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/RebeccaRideal?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Artwork by Phillip Thor - https://linktr.ee/Philipthor_art  The Way Podcast - www.PodcastTheWay.com - Follow at Twitter / Instagram - @podcasttheway (Subscribe/Follow on streaming platforms and social media!) To watch the visuals with the trailer go to https://www.podcasttheway.com/trailers/ Thank you Don Grant for the Intro/Outro. Check out his podcast - https://threeinterestingthings.captivate.fm Intro guitar copied from Aiden Ayers at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UiB9FMOP5s  *The views demonstrated in this show are strictly those of The Way Podcast/Radio Show*

Our guest today is Napoleonic Era naval historian Evan Wilson! Evan is an associate professor in the John B. Hattendorf Center for Maritime Historical Research at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, where he also co-directs the Graduate Certificate in Maritime History. He was previously the Associate Director of International Security Studies at Yale University and a Caird Senior Research Fellow at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut. He earned a BA in History at Yale University, an MPhil in Modern European History from Cambridge, and a PhD in History from the University of Oxford. Evan is the author of The Horrible Peace: British Veterans and the End of the Napoleonic Wars (University of Massachusetts Press - use promo code MAS073!) and A Social History of British Naval Officers, 1775–1815 (The Boydell Press). He is also the co-editor of numerous volumes, including Navies in Multipolar Worlds: From the Age of Sail to the Present (Routledge) with Paul Kennedy, Eighteenth-Century Naval Officers: A Transnational Perspective (Palgrave), with Jakob Seerup and AnnaSara Hammar, and Strategy and the Sea: Essays in Honour of John B. Hattendorf (The Boydell Press) with N.A.M. Rodger, J. Ross Dancy, and Benjamin Darnell. His articles have appeared in The Mariner's Mirror, the Journal of Military History, the English Historical Review, and the Journal for Maritime Research, among others. In 2018, Evan was awarded the Sir Julian Corbett Prize in Modern Naval History by the Institute of Historical Research. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and sits on the Editorial Board of the University of Massachusetts Press's monograph series Veterans. Finally, we're showing some more love for naval history and the Napoleonic Era! Join us for a very interesting chat with Evan - we'll talk Partick O'Brian novels, veterans of the Napoleonic wars, teaching at a prep school then at a senior-level professional military education institution, Radiohead, and other topics, all while Bill and Brian can't seem to get their Rapid Fire questions straight! Shoutout to Ralph's BBQ in Weldon, North Carolina, located just off I-95 at exit 173! Rec. 05/16/2023

879 people who migrated to Australia have had their names added to the National Monument to Migration in Sydney. The National Maritime Museum's monument is a tribute to Australia's migration heritage - and recognises those who help to shape the country.

This week, it's just Rachel and Lynne as we discuss our big event for the year - The Content Byte Summit! We are keen to share our excitement about the event, which is coming to Sydney in September - from the 14 to 16th, in fact. We chat about:  Why we decided to do the summit What writers and content creators will get out of attending  How keen we are to meet our keynote speakers - Ed Gandia and Jennifer Goforth Gregory How we feel about challenging ourselves to take the podcast to the next level What organising such a big event means Why we love the National Maritime Museum as a venue What we are most looking forward to during the summit Why the topic of AI? Find out more about The Content Byte Summit (and sign up for updates) here: https://thecontentbytesummit.com.au/   Find us:  Rachel's website https://rachelsmith.com.au/    Lynne's website https://lynnetestoni.com/ Rachel's List https://rachelslist.com.au/ Thanks (as always) to our sponsors Rounded, an easy invoicing and accounting solution that helps freelancers run their businesses with confidence. See https://rounded.com.au/ 

Today's guest is David Morgan-Owen. Dave is a Reader in the History of War in the Defence Studies Department at King's College, London. From 2019-2021, he served as Academic Programme Director for the Intermediate Command and Staff Course (Land) and the MA in Military and Security Studies. He received all of his degrees from the University of Exeter and has a park bench on campus named in his honor after having spent so many years there (not really, but we could start a campaign?). He has held fellowships at the Modern War Institute at West Point, the National Museum of the Royal Navy, and the National Maritime Museum. Dave is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Higher Education Academy. In 2016, he won the Julian Corbett Prize in Modern Naval History. Dave's first book The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914 (Oxford) was awarded the Templer Medal for best first book from the Society for Army Historical Research in 2017. In 2020, he co-edited with Louis Halewood Economic Warfare and the Sea: Grand Strategies for Maritime Powers (Liverpool). Dave's articles have appeared in the English Historical Review, The Journal of Modern History, War in History, and War & Society, among others. His current project examines how the First World War challenged ideas of Britain as a ‘sea power', and what these discussions meant for the prosecution of the conflict. Dave's greatest accomplishment, however, is having convinced Season I guest Aimée Fox to become his partner, and along with Aimée is one of MHPT UK Podcast Dog Freddie's Human Feeding Units. Join us for an interesting and fun chat with David Morgan-Owen. We'll talk about rolling cannonballs on HMS Victory, being Jeremy Black's chauffeur, having tea with Sir Michael Howard, Riddle in the Sands, and Oasis, as well as some good military history. Check it out! Rec.: 02/17/2023

Our guest today is Dr. Anna Lois McKay (that's pronounced McKai!). Anna is the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Liverpool, where she is working on a project titled "Prisoners' Progress: Imperial Circulations of War Captives, 1793–1815.” She is a specialist on 18th-Century prison hulks, prisoners of war, and forced migration. In 2021-22, Anna was a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of English at University College Cork. She was the Alan Pearsall Fellow in Naval and Maritime History at the Institute of Historical Research, London in 2020-2021. She earned a BA in English and Related Literature from the University of York in 2012, and an MA in 18th-Century Studies also from the University of York in 2014. Her PhD, awarded in 2020, was an Arts and Humanities Research Council joint project between the University of Leicester and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Anna is the author of "‘Allowed to die'? Prison Hulks, Convict Corpses and the Inquiry of 1847,” which appeared in Cultural and Social History in May 2021 and won the Royal Historical Society's Alexander Prize in 2022. Her article “Floating Hell” was published in BBC History Magazine in September 2022. Her work has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the European Research Council, the Society for Nautical Research, and the Economic History society. Anna is an Early Career Member of the Royal Historical Society and has been awarded The Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions awarded her a Postdoctoral Fellowship Seal of Excellence. Anna has conducted archival research in the United Kingdom, Australia, Bermuda, and Canada, and her work has allowed her to conduct fieldwork in dockyards, prisoner-of-war depots, and penal colony sites around the world. We'll discuss prisoner theater, writing a play, the nomad-like existence of post-docs in the UK, chess-boxing, Peaky Blinders, among many other topics. Join us for a fun and fascinating talk with Anna McKay! Rec.: 12/02/2022

Dr. Sarah Longair unseats European powers' efforts to control the East African coast, through a Kiti Cha Enzi, or Swahili Chair of Power, produced in the 19th century. Intricately decorated with an ivory inlay, a large, wooden throne sits proudly - not in its place of production of Witu, Kenya, but the stores of the British Museum. Kiti cha enzi, or seats of power, were used as thrones by Swahili rulers from the 18th century. Their distinctive form incorporates myriad cultural influences, highlighting the vibrant pre-colonial trading history of the Swahili community, while their symbolic use speaks to shifting patterns of power on the African coast. Produced as Germany and Britain competed for colonial control on the East African coast, this chair is a material symbol of how a small Swahili community resisted European expansion. Its seizure from the Swahili Sultan Fumo Bakari, and subsequent relocation by Admiral Fremantle to the National Maritime Museum, and later British Museum, speaks to our current interests in the colonial origins of museum objects. But it also reveals the complex rivalries between Western imperial pofwers, and how East African leaders exercised their own agency by playing them against each other. PRESENTER: Dr. Sarah Longair, Senior Lecturer in the History of Empire at the University of Lincoln. ART: Kiti Cha Enzi (Swahili Chair of Power), East Africa (19th Century). IMAGE: 'Sketch of Kiti Cha Enzi of the Sultan of Witu, British Museum Af1992,05.1. Drawing: S Longair'. SOUNDS: Radi Cultural Group. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

A lot of people assume that Fiona is a very old Scottish name, but the first known Scottish Fiona is from the 1890s: Fiona Macleod, the enormously popular novelist of Scotland's Celtic Revival movement. But when she suddenly stopped writing in 1905...and there turned out to be far more surprises about Fiona Macleod than the novelty of her name. Writer and performer Harry Josie Giles and PhD researcher Moll Callaway-Heaton consider the first Scottish Fiona. This is part one of a pair of episodes about the name Fiona; part two will explore the etymology of the name and similar ones in various languages, and examine the first appearance of Fiona in literature, which comes with its own cocktail of complication. Find out more about this episode and get extra information about the topics therein at theallusionist.org/fiona1, where there's also a transcript. The Allusionist's online home is theallusionist.org. Stay in touch at facebook.com/allusionistshow, instagram.com/allusionistshow, youtube.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/allusionistshow, while it still stands. Support the show at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent podcast going, you also get behind-the-scenes glimpses of the show, fortnightly livestreams, special perks at live shows, and best of all the Allusioverse Discord community. The Allusionist is produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Thanks to Anne Pond from the National Maritime Museum in Cornwall for boat information, and to Martin Austwick for editorial help and the original music. Hear Martin's own songs via palebirdmusic.com. Our ad partner is Multitude. To sponsor the show, contact them at multitude.productions/ads. This episode is sponsored by: • Wondrium, the online library of lectures, courses, tutorials, documentaries and more. Get 50% off your first three months of Wondrium at wondrium.com/allusionist.• Mint Mobile: cut your cellphone bill to a mere $15 a month at mintmobile.com/allusionist.• Bombas, whose mission is to make the comfiest clothes ever, and match every item sold with an equal item donated. Go to bombas.com/allusionist to get 20% off your first purchase. • Squarespace, your one-stop shop for building and running a sleek website. Go to squarespace.com/allusionist for a free 2-week trial, and get 10 percent off your first purchase of a website or domain with the code allusionist. Support the show: http://patreon.com/allusionistSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr. Helen Paul bursts the South Sea Bubble, tracing the triangular trade of slavery between London and Britain's colonies in South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, via John Cleveley's 18th century painting, The Luxborough Galley on Fire. Sailing into the dark green waters of the mid-Atlantic Ocean, the Luxborough Galley is in imperilled. Consumed by flames, with no land in sight, its white passengers frantically firefight - to no avail. Commissioned by one of the ship's few survivors for display in Greenwich, John Cleveley's six oil paintings recast the story as one of British heroism - erasing the history of the South Sea Company's colonial profiteering, catastrophic South Sea Bubble of 1720, and scapegoating its enslaved Black passengers for carelessly causing the blaze. Still housed in the National Maritime Museum, on the southern bank of the River Thames, John Cleveley's rendering exposes London's vast investment into the international slave trade, linking British colonies across the world. By focussing on cannibalism, it unintentionally commemorates the inhumanity, lack of civislisation, and crimes against humanity committed by its white colonial benefactors. PRESENTER: Dr Helen Paul, lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of Southampton, and Honorary Associate Professor at the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction at UCL. ART: The Luxborough Galley on Fire, 25 June 1727, John Cleveley the Elder (c. 18th Century). IMAGE: 'The 'Luxborough Galley' on fire, 25 June 1727'. SOUNDS: One Man Book. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

This week we take time out from our reading of the canon to visit the Caird Library and Archive at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, to talk to senior curator Jeremy Michell and look at documents and artefacts underpinning the Patrick O'Brian novels.  Visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsGui2FMAoQ to watch the video version. 

Freak Ships of the Nineteenth Century is the title of a pamphlet written in 1966 by J Guthrie, then an employee of the maritime classification society Lloyds Register. It was written for private circulation amongst the staff. Guthrie realised that, as the premier classification society Lloyds Register were able to produce a very good technical description, often directltly from plans, reports and records of conventional ships. But this left a gap in their knowledge - 'But what of the unorthodox ships, the rebels from tradition: those monsters and freaks of the nautical world which, throughout the whole of the 19th century attained transient fame (or notoriety) before disappearing from the scene for ever?'. Guthrie's pamphlet aimed to answer that question by exploring some of the most radical nautical designs of the nineteenth century. This episode, the first of four, looks at Monitors, a vessel type named after the original ship Monitor, built by the Confederate Navy in 1861 during the American Civil War. She led to an entire class of vessels all of which shared her curious design: an ironclad warship designed to float only just above the surface, with a single turret, to present as small a target as possible. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Andrew Choong Han Lin, a curator at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London in 1877.Subsequent episodes will look at circular ships, cigar ships and the unique Cleopatra, an iron vessel designed and constructed for the sole purpose of bringing an ancient Egyptian obelisk to London from Alexandria. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

What did people wear in naval battles and why? The adoption, style and development of naval uniform is a hugely significant subject - one which helps us understand not only the development of the navy as a fighting body but also the forging of national identities, gendered identities and notions of social hierarchy. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Dr Amy Miller, Curator of Decorative Arts and Material Culture at Royal Museums Greenwich. Amy has used the remarkable and extensive collections at the National Maritime Museum, along with personal papers, diaries, fiction and period artefacts to help us understand these wonderful garments in their social and economic contexts in her book Dressed to Kill: British Naval Uniform, Masculinity and Contemporary Fashions, 1748–1857. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The first of a new mini-series on ship models. Dr Sam Willis explores the extraordinary model of HMS Royal George held in the collections of the National Maritime Museum in London. The Royal George is widely considered to be one of the finest eighteenth-century ship models ever made. It was made for the King in the 1770s, as a means of encouraging George III to take an interest in the Royal Navy and some of the finest artists in the kingdom worked on it, resulting in a model that not only showcased the power of a First Rate ship of the line, but also the artistic ingenuity and skill in the kingdom. The ship modelled is the First Rate Royal George, launched in 1756, at the time the largest ship in the world, that would have had a crew in excess of 800 and was armed with 100 guns. The Royal George played a significant role in the Seven Years War (1756-63) and the war of American Independence (1775-1783) but sank at her mooring near Portsmouth in August 1782 in one of history's worst maritime disasters. More than 900 souls died, including 300 women and 60 children visiting the crew. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Things just got worse and worse for the Austrians after the Battle of Marengo, until they were defeated again by the French, and much closer to home, at Hohenlinden in Bavaria. They made peace with France, as did Russia, leaving Britain as the only major power still in the Second Coalition, which was now all but dead. Britain did win a couple more victories, notably in Malta and then, with the Turks, over the isolated remnants of the French Army of Egypt. Most spectacularly, it won the great naval Battle of Copenhagen, where Nelson won undying fame for his laconic comment “I see no signal”, though the truth was slightly less creditable to him, and a lot more creditable to his commander than the legend allows. News of that victory would have been balm to William Pitt the Younger's soul. But, oddly, he was no longer Prime Minister to receive it. After seventeen years, he'd gone two weeks earlier. Illustration: The British fleet off Kronborg Castle, Elsinore, 28 March 1801 [before the Battle of Copenhagen], by Nicholas Pocock, 1810. © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License

Soils matter! Chris Churchman explains how protecting green areas and improving soil quality is crucial for fighting climate change. Chris is a landscape architect and strategist, and the founding Director of Churchman Thornhill Finch landscape architects. As well as having decades of experience designing stunning projects like the gardens of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, Chris is interested in the role of soil in tackling climate change. He joined me to talk about the potential for soil to play a much bigger role in sequestering carbon, how new development on greenfield sites releases a lot more carbon than we currently account for, and some thoughts on urban greening tactics. Follow Chris:https://www.churchmanthornhillfinch.co.uk/Follow the Green Urbanist:https://twitter.com/GreenUrbanPodhttps://www.instagram.com/greenurbanistpodhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/green-urbanist-podcast

In this episode Dr Sam Willis explores HMS Warrior, one of the most groundbreaking ships in the history of naval power. An iron-framed, iron-clad single-gundeck warship, launched in 1860 HMS Warrior defied categorisation and changed the way that seapower was both wielded and imagined. She was built in a period of intense rivalry between Britain and France when technology was advancing so rapidly that innovations existed alongside an entirely realistic fear that new inventions would undermine Britain's existing naval supremacy. In this period steam would replace sail for propulsion; iron and then steel would replace wood for construction; exploding shells would replace solid iron shot for armament and they would be fired from rifled, breech loading guns that could fire further than could ever have been imagined. Warrior had more firepower than two standard wood ships of the line. Remarkably, Warrior still survives: she was decommissioned from active service in 1882, but survived being scrapped. In 1979 the ship was rescued for preservation having served as a fuelling pontoon in South Wales for 50 years. She can now be visited in all of her glory at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth: a most remarkable warship – a technological innovation in the business of war, but which never fired a single shot in anger: and the two were linked: warrior was so superior to any other warship at the time of its construction that its supremacy never had to be challenged in battle: she was the ultimate naval deterrent. To find out more, Sam speaks with Jeremy Michell, Senior Curator: Maritime Technologies at the National Maritime Museum in London. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This episode has been inspired by the tragedy of the Nanggala, a submarine of the Indonesian navy that disappeared earlier this month with 53 crew members on board and only 72 hours of oxygen to keep them alive. After 5 days of searching Nangala was found at a depth of more than 800 meters, split into three sections. This has led to a great deal of discussion in the press about submarine design. In this episode Dr Sam Willis talks with Andrew Choong Han Lin, curator of ships plans and technical records at the National Maritime Museum in London. They discuss the fascinating history of the British K-class submarines of the First World War that became infamous for their poor design. To go alongside this podcast episode we have animated the fabulous ship plans for the K-Class submarines that are held in the collections of the Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum. Check it out on the Mariner's Mirror Podcast YouTube page. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Regular listeners will know that over the past few months we have been reading extracts from the logbook of the whaler Swan of Hull at the start of each episode (with the exception of the Iconic Ships and Great Sea Fights special series). The Swan became trapped in the ice off the west coast of Greenland in the autumn of 1836.These readings come from a transcription of the logbook held in the archives of the Caird Library In the National Maritime Museum in London. – the transcription has been made especially for this podcast – you are the first people ever to hear these words read aloud. This podcast episode is, itself, a little piece of maritime history.The episode presents the final entries in her log, in April 1837. Little is known about what happened next but it is clear from the log that they had very little time left. She was discovered by a fleet of whaleships. Ten sailors were put on board her to navigate her home, along with fresh provisions. From her original complement of between fifty and sixty men—including some men of a wrecked ship whom she had taken onboard in the previous summer—only seventeen men were alive when she reached Lerwick. She finally made it back to hull in July 1837, long after she had been given up for lost. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.