The Persistence of Sail in the Age of Steam

The Persistence of Sail in the Age of Steam PDF Author: Donna J. Souza
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781489901408
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description

The Persistence of Sail in the Age of Steam

The Persistence of Sail in the Age of Steam PDF Author: Donna J. Souza
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781489901408
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Persistence of Sail in the Age of Steam

The Persistence of Sail in the Age of Steam PDF Author: Donna J. Souza
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1489901396
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
In Archaeology Under Water (1966: 19), pioneer nautical archaeologist George Bass pointed out how much easier it is to train someone who is already an archaeologist to become a diver than to take trained divers and teach them to do archaeology. While this is 'generally true, there have also been occasions when well-trained and enthusiastic sport-divers have been willing to accept the train ing and discipline necessary to conduct good archaeological science, becoming first-rate scholars in the process. Dr. Donna Souza's book is the product of just such a transition. It shows how a sport-diver and volunteer fieldworker can proceed through a rigorous graduate program to achieve research results that are convincing in their own right and point toward new directions in the discipline as a whole. What is new in this book for maritime archaeology? Perhaps the most obvious and important feature of Dr. Souza's archaeological and historical analysis of the wreck at Pulaski Reef and its contemporaries in the Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida, is the way it serves as a means to a larger end---namely an understanding of the social history of the transition from sail to steam in late nineteenth century maritime commerce in America. The relationship between changes in technology and culture is a classic theme in anthropology, and this study extends ~t theme into the domain of underwater archaeology.

Sailors in the Age of Steam

Sailors in the Age of Steam PDF Author: Ivan T. Luke (Jr.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Merchant marine
Languages : en
Pages : 630

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Book Description
Technology is continually advancing. With each major step forward, users must decide whether to adopt the new technology or to continue using the old. A number of things can influence this choice, but for commercial technologies, economic self-interest is presumed to be the dominant factor. Commercially superior technologies are expected to replace their less-profitable predecessors quickly. Curiously, this did not happen when ocean-going steamships evolved to be more profitable than sailing ships in the 1870s. Some mariners persisted with commercial sail well into the twentieth century. Many explanations have been offered, but none fully account for the phenomenon. Philosopher Albert Borgmann provides a possible alternative interpretation. Borgmann suggests that at some deep, intuitive level, we humans sense that there are benefits in doing some things the hard way; that our lives are meaningfully enriched when we engage with technologies that demand significant time, skill, and commitment. He calls these focal things and practices. This study explores the possibility that the subtle allure of Borgmann's focal things and practices contributed to the persistence of commercial sail. The historical record of a select group of schoonermen is examined, mariners who chose to work under sail into the mid-twentieth century. Qualitative analysis reveals a positive correlation between their lived experiences and key indicia of Borgmann's focal things and practices. Other, more conventional explanations for their choices are examined and dismissed. A conclusion is reached that the attractive forces Borgmann ascribes to focal things and practices did play a role in these mariners' apparently counterintuitive choices. This finding adds weight to Borgmann's larger body of work and has implications for how humanity might deal with advancing technology in the future.

Steam Titans

Steam Titans PDF Author: William M. Fowler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620409089
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Winner of the Brewington Book Prize for Maritime History The story of the epic contest between shipping magnates Samuel Cunard and Edward Collins for mid-19th century control of the Atlantic. Between 1815 and the American Civil War, the greatest invention of the Industrial Revolution delivered a sea change in oceanic transportation. Steam travel transformed the Atlantic into a pulsating highway, dominated by ports in Liverpool and New York, as steamships ferried people, supplies, money, and information with astounding speed and regularity. American raw materials flowed eastward, while goods, capital, people, and technology crossed westward. The Anglo-American “partnership” fueled development worldwide; it also gave rise to a particularly intense competition. Steam Titans tells the story of a transatlantic fight to wrest control of the globe’s most lucrative trade route. Two men--Samuel Cunard and Edward Knight Collins--and two nations wielded the tools of technology, finance, and politics to compete for control of a commercial lifeline that spanned the North Atlantic. The world watched carefully to see which would win. Each competitor sent to sea the fastest, biggest, and most elegant ships in the world, hoping to earn the distinction of being known as “the only way to cross.” Historian William M. Fowler brings to life the spectacle of this generation-long struggle for supremacy, during which New York rose to take her place among the greatest ports and cities of the world, and recounts the tale of a competition that was the opening act in the drama of economic globalization, still unfolding today.

The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860

The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860 PDF Author: Jack Lawrence Schermerhorn
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300213891
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Calvin Schermerhorn’s provocative study views the development of modern American capitalism through the window of the nineteenth-century interstate slave trade. This eye-opening history follows money and ships as well as enslaved human beings to demonstrate how slavery was a national business supported by far-flung monetary and credit systems reaching across the Atlantic Ocean. The author details the anatomy of slave supply chains and the chains of credit and commodities that intersected with them in virtually every corner of the pre–Civil War United States, and explores how an institution that destroyed lives and families contributed greatly to the growth of the expanding republic’s capitalist economy.

Iron and Steamship Archaeology

Iron and Steamship Archaeology PDF Author: Michael McCarthy
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0306471906
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
In the early 1980s the author was asked to investigate the newly discovered wreck of the Xantho, an iron screw steamship active off the Australian coast during the period 1848 to 1872, and to develop a strategy to stop the looting that was occurring at the site. This relatively straightforward assignment turned into a long-term research program for applying maritime archaeology to the conservation of iron-hulled wrecks.

Anthropological Perspectives on Technology

Anthropological Perspectives on Technology PDF Author: Michael B. Schiffer
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 9780826323699
Category : Anthropology
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
These fourteen original essays accept a dual premise: technology pervades and is embedded in all human activities. By taking that approach, studies of technology address two questions central in anthropological and archaeological research today-accounting for variability and change. These diverse yet interrelated chapters show that to understand human lives, researchers must deal with the material world that all peoples create and inhabit. Therefore an anthropology of technology is not a separate, discrete inquiry; instead, it is a way to connect how people make and use things to any activity studied, ranging from religion, to enculturation, to communication, to art. Each contributor discusses theories and methods and also offers a substantial case study. These detailed inquiries span human societies from the Paleolithic to the computer age. By moving beyond the usual approach of examining ancient technologies, particularly chipped stone and low-fired ceramics, this volume probes for the construction of meaning in the material world across millennia. The authors of these essays find technology to be an inclusive and flexible topic that merges with studies of everything else in human activity. "A provocative and powerful discussion of the role of technology in human cultures. At a time when archaeology has become less focused on theory, and archaeology and social anthropology seem to fracture farther and farther apart, the book is a breath of fresh air."--Professor John Douglas, University of Montana

Archaeology and the Social History of Ships

Archaeology and the Social History of Ships PDF Author: Richard A. Gould
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139498169
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
Maritime archaeology deals with shipwrecks and is carried out by divers rather than diggers. It embraces maritime history and analyses changes in shipbuilding, navigation and seamanship and offers fresh perspectives on the cultures and societies that produced the ships and sailors. Drawing on detailed past and recent case studies, Richard A. Gould provides an up-to-date review of the field that includes dramatic new findings arising from improved undersea technologies. This second edition of Archaeology and the Social History of Ships has been updated throughout to reflect new findings and new interpretations of old sites. The new edition explores advances in undersea technology in archaeology, especially remotely operated vehicles. The book reviews many of the major recent shipwreck findings, including the Vasa in Stockholm, the Viking wrecks at Roskilde Fjord and the Titanic.

The Life and Times of a Merchant Sailor

The Life and Times of a Merchant Sailor PDF Author: Jason M. Burns
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461502098
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
Historical archaeologists are in a unique position to analyze both historical documents and archaeological data in order to generate hypotheses and draw conclusions. In this work, the data not only provided the history of the ship "Catharine" but also the economic, social and political environments in which the ship was built and employed. This work focuses not only on the shipwreck and the wrecking event, but on the history and archaeology of a single ship. With this expanded view, the research also delves into: *International shipbuilding; *The struggle for dominance in the ship trade in the 19th century. This book will be of interest to underwater, historical and cultural archaeologists, social historians, cultural heritage managers and archaeologists working in the southeastern United States.

The Caribbean and the Atlantic World Economy

The Caribbean and the Atlantic World Economy PDF Author: Adrian Leonard
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137432721
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
This collection of essays explores the inter-imperial connections between British, Spanish, Dutch, and French Caribbean colonies, and the 'Old World' countries which founded them. Grounded in primary archival research, the thirteen contributors focus on the ways that participants in the Atlantic World economy transcended imperial boundaries.