The Mariner's Mirror Podcast The Society for Nautical Research and the Lloyds Register Foundation

The Dreadnought Hoax is one of the most fantastical events of all naval and maritime history. In 1910 four white English people – three men and one woman – pretended to be members of the Abyssinian royal family, complete with black face make up, false beards and magnificent robes, and were given a tour of HMS Dreadnought, the most powerful battleship ever built, the pride of the Royal Navy and the pride of the British Empire. The hoax worked like a dream. No-one suspected a thing. Even more remarkable, one of those people was none other than the young Virgina Woolf, yet to be married and take the name of Woolf and yet to amaze with world with her intellect and literary skill. It is a story that touches on questions of race, gender and empire; on credulity, outrage and humour; on cultural norms and expectations; and all wrapped in ideas about seapower. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Danell Jones, author of the excellent new book The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race and the Dreadnought Hoax.
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In this episode we visit Vrak - The Museum of Wrecks in Stockholm. Nowhere else in the world are there as many well-preserved wooden wrecks as there are in the Baltic Sea. People have lived on the shores of the Baltic ever since the end of the Ice Age, where they have travelled, sailed, hunted and waged war, for millennia. The Baltic has special water conditions: it is cold and brackish and has low oxygen levels, which means there is no shipworm to destroy sunken timber. As a result, at the bottom of the Baltic is an exceptional collection of timber heritage sites, from the Stone Age to the Vikings and beyond. Vrak - The Museum of Wrecks is a contemporary museum designed to explore and share this heritage in innovative ways.
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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.
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The third episode in our mini series on Maritime Sweden is a tour of Sweden's National Maritime Museum in Stockholm: Sjöhistoriska 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.
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One of the most fascinating aspects of Viking history is their voyages east, to Arab lands. Vikings from the geographical area that would become Sweden played an important role in the creation of the political entity known as Rus, and some Scandinavians travelled by river to Arab lands, where they traded slaves for dirhams, and to Constantinople, where they served as mercenaries. Many others who did not actually visit Arab lands met Arabs in Khazaria and Volga-Bulgaria, which were major trading hubs north of the Black Sea. Numerous fascinating sources survive from both the Greek and Arab world depicting far-traveling Swedes, some of which shed valuable light on their customs. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Viking historian Tore Skeie, author of The Wolf Age: The Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons and the Battle for the North Sea Empire.
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This episode starts a new mini-series on the maritime history of Sweden, and we begin by exploring Sweden’s fascinating naval history over the last 500 years, and how Sweden’s modern defence thinking has been shaped by its past. Founded in 1522, the Swedish navy is one of the oldest continuous serving navies in the world and its complex history reflects the numerous geo-political changes that have affected the countries around the Baltic ever since. With a shifting map of allies, threats and foes, the Swedish navy has been a constant presence and a hotbed of maritime innovation; not least introducing the line of battle as a naval tactic in 1563 under Erik XIV, half a century before its widespread adoption by other European navies. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Fred Hocker, Director of Research at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm.
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