Category: Public History

Public History

‘Making waves’: the activities of the Port Towns and Urban Cultures group.

This blog, by Dr Mel Bassett, research associate for the Port Towns and Urban Cultures project, discusses the many activities of the PTUC group, from working on major First World War exhibitions, to sharing their research with schoolchildren. Mel’s research interests centre on dockyard workers’ identities and the role of empire in the Edwardian period.

Situated on the south coast, and on the doorstep of some of the nation’s most important naval and maritime heritage, the History Department at the University of Portsmouth are undertaking exciting new research into the influence of maritime history on land.

Port Towns and Urban Cultures (PTUC) group was established in 2010 by Professor Brad Beaven, Dr Karl Bell and Dr Robert James, and now boasts a team of international collaborators from the academic and professional world.

We have a vibrant postgraduate environment. There have been 11 ‘Port Town’ PhD students so far, and the creation of the new Naval History MA in October 2016 has already welcomed over 40 students. We also had the pleasure of welcoming a visiting scholar from the University of Oviedo, Asturas, Spain.

Indeed, Portsmouth has become the centre of all things ‘Port Towns.’ We have established links with universities and museum networks in Liverpool, Hull, London and Scandinavia, and are now looking East and forging partnerships with Kobe University’s ‘Port Cities’ project in Japan. Moreover, we have a presence on the internet and social media. The Port Towns and Urban Cultures website features a range of collaborators from established academics to postgraduate students and offers a vibrant platform in which those interested in the influence of the sea can share their research. This is complimented by our presence on social media where we have loyal followings on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. There is now also a book, edited by Beaven, Bell and James, which showcases the importance and social and cultural uniqueness of port towns from around the globe.

We are currently undertaking research into several areas. One of our most ambitious projects has been to map the impact of Royal Naval, merchant and fishing sailor communities on land in Portsmouth by using our ‘Sailortown’ app, which was officially launched this year. Scholars and the general public will be able to understand the relationship between maritime livelihoods and community structures and physically walk through sailortown using our online guides. We hope to also extend this project out to other maritime communities, and are working in collaboration with the University of Gothenburg to do the same in Sweden.

Profs Mark Connelly and Brad Beaven admiring the Jutland pop-up exhibition

Another exciting project has been to research the impact the First World War’s most famous naval engagement, the Battle of Jutland, had on the British public. The project was funded by the AHRC’s Gateways to the First World War research centre, and working with the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsdown University of the Third Age, and several undergraduate student volunteers, we traced every Royal Naval sailor killed at the Battle. This has enabled us to make unique insights into how the naval war affected contemporary society, where sailor families lived and the long-term effects of the war at sea on memorialisation and heritage.

Mel Bassett at the opening of Portsmouth City Museums WW1 Exhibition

I am the original PhD student that came out of the Port Towns and Urban Cultures stable, so to speak, and am now a Research Associate on the project. As a postgraduate a few colleagues and I helped to establish the PTUC website and social media presence, which has gone from strength-to-strength since its creation in 2013. I have been very fortunate to work on a number of important and interesting projects such as Portsmouth’s First World War Centenary commemorations which included staging a £97,000 Heritage Lottery Funded exhibition and events programme. I came from a Museum professional background before undertaking my PhD, and this has helped greatly in forging links and establishing working relationships with non-academic collaborators. Another great project was working with the University’s UP for Uni team on workshops introducing children to the world of ‘Sickly Slums and Sailortowns’ – a Horrible Histories-themed day where they could learn about slum living, sailor slang and create their own tattoos (on nylon).

Prof Brad Beaven placing exhibits of Centenary Exhibition 2014

‘Sickly Slums and Sailortowns’: showing off tattoos

I also teach part-time at the University of Portsmouth, and without doubt, the most exciting part of my work is getting the opportunity to spread our research to our undergraduates. We have had several students volunteer on high-profile projects such as our AHRC Gateways to the First World War-funded Battle of Jutland project. Through working on an actual research project in tandem with Professor Brad Beaven and me, the students were able to get a real sense of the purpose of the research. They could see the tangible results that were produced through assisting us, and also got to see their work make a difference too. As a result the students have not only learned skills to help them in their degree, but also have experiences to cite on their CVs; which will raise their chances of employability. We are also pleased to note that some were so inspired that they undertook dissertation projects based on the topic.

The University of Portsmouth’s History Department is making big waves on land on the subject of maritime history, and I am glad to be at the forefront of new and exciting research.

Follow us:

Website: porttowns.port.ac.uk

Twitter: @PortPTUC

Facebook: Port Towns Ptuc

Instagram: porttownsandurbancultures

All images author’s own.

July 31, 2017
Lost Voices: Spiritualism on the Home Front, 1914-1919.

Dr Karl Bell, reader in cultural and social history at Portsmouth, has written the following blog based on his AHRC-funded ‘Everyday Lives of the First World War’ research project that examined the role of Spiritualism in Britain during the First World War. Karl’s research interests cover various aspects of ‘the fantastical imagination’, including magical beliefs and practices, witchcraft, the supernatural, superstition, prophecy, millenarianism, legends, myths, urban folklore and (proto-) science-fiction tropes from 1700 onwards.

To read Karl’s blog, please click the following link: https://everydaylivesinwar.herts.ac.uk/?p=3385

Image author’s own

July 25, 2017
The sad death of 16-year old James Beck

Dr Mike Esbester, senior lecturer in history at Portsmouth, has written the following blog telling the story of the death, in July 1914, of a teenager working for the Caledonian Railway Company. Mike’s research focuses on the cultural history of safety, risk and accident prevention in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Volunteers working on the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project have uncovered the stories of nearly 4,000 individuals who were either injured or killed whilst working on Britain’s railways between January 1911 and June 1915. Amongst the casualties was 16-year old James Beck, a ‘wagon greaser’ (someone responsible for ensuring the axle boxes of freight wagons were topped up with greaser, to make the wheels turn smoothly) for the Caledonian Railway Company. On 16 July 1914, Beck was walking between two railway lines near Shawfield (in Glasgow) when he was hit by a train and killed. His case was later used as a warning to others in the Caledonian Railway’s 1921 accident prevention publication ‘The Vigilance Booklet’, from which the images here are taken.

The investigation attributed the accident to ‘want of care on the part of Beck, who, I am assured, had been specially warned to beware of trains’ when he was walking between the lines – though notably he hadn’t been told not to walk between the lines and to find a safer way to do his work. This was just one of 125 cases featured in the accident reports for the 3 months between July and September 1914, itself a small fraction of the total numbers killed or injured.

The volunteers were based at the National Railway Museum, York, the partner institution working on the project with the History team’s Mike Esbester. Between them, the volunteers put in over 1,000 hours of time, cataloguing what happened, to whom and why, for 3,913 railway worker accidents. All of the details were contained in a series of official investigations undertaken by state inspectors between 1911 and 1915 but which aren’t easily accessible by the public. As a result of this project, people will be able to find out much more about what work on the railways was like – including how dangerous it was. We’re working on getting all of the details into a single searchable format at the moment – as soon as it’s ready we will get it up on the project website (www.railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk) with further stories emerging as we go along.

All images used by kind permission of the author.

July 4, 2017
The Battle of Jutland: Its impact on the people of Portsmouth

Dr Rob James, senior lecturer in history, and John Bolt, research assistant and PhD student, have written the following blog on their experiences of creating an online map, with the help of a local community group, Portsdown U3A, to identify the impact of the Battle of Jutland on the people of Portsmouth and the local area. The online map is available to view on the Port Towns and Urban Cultures website http://porttowns.port.ac.uk/.

Image taken from http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nrg1/TheBattleOfJutlandMay311916RoyalChristmasCard.jpg

The Battle of Jutland took place on 31 May 1916. It was the largest sea-battle of the First World War, and was one in which many men from both the British and German navies perished. To mark its 100-year anniversary, a group of researchers from Portsdown U3A decided to conduct a research project to honour the local people who had died in the battle. Their aim was to identify the names of the 662 men from Portsmouth and the local area who had perished and create a Roll of Honour. Portsdown U3A’s Jutland research group planned to display the Roll of Honour at a series of pop-up exhibitions across the city of Portsmouth. The exhibition would also include a number of detailed information panels summarising the battle, as well as featuring short biographies of some of the men from the area who had lost their lives.

In May 2015 two members of the group, Carole Chapman and Steve Doe, arranged a meeting with Rob to discuss how they could take the project further. They had planned on submitting a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant application in order to finance their exhibition, but were seeking ideas for what else they could do to develop the project. Rob had been working on a mapping project with the Port Towns and Urban Cultures (PTUC) team in which the heritage of Portsmouth’s ‘Sailortown’ districts was being plotted on to contemporary maps as a resource for academics and visitors to the city (see the ‘Sailortown’ app), and suggested that the U3A could create a map that would detail the loss of men from Portsmouth and the local area. It was decided that a paper copy of the map would be created to take around the various pop-up exhibitions, as well as an online map that would be hosted on the PTUC website, where visitors to the site would be able to click on the various ‘pins’ in order to find out more about the men who had lost their lives. The plans had been made; now all that was needed was success in the planned HLF application…

It was with delight and great relief that the U3A heard that their grant application to the HLF was successful. Their vision could now become reality. The grant allowed co-investigator Rob to employ John as a research assistant in order to create the required maps. After taking receipt of the huge database the U3A had collated, John began work on verifying all of the information he had to hand, checking it alongside a database that PTUC’s Dr Mel Bassett had been working on as part of an AHRC-funded project that captured the national casualties of the battle (to access the database go to http://porttowns.port.ac.uk/source-information/jutland-casualty-database/). Once the data had been verified John, along with the team of Online Course Developers (OCDs) at the University, began working on the paper map. This process consisted of plotting each participant of the battle who had a link to Portsmouth on to a 1910 map of the Portsmouth area by using information on next of kin and their places of birth.

After the paper map was completed, John and the OCDs started work on the online map. An historic map of Portsmouth was overlaid on to a current Google map of the city so that all of the service personnel’s locations could be plotted on the map. This did create a number of difficulties, not least because many street names had changed or vanished due to the passing of time, from both war and urban renewal, which a computer programme is not able to immediately recognise. After many hours working through the database, John was able to accurately locate the vast majority of men using multiple resources, including contemporary Ordnance Survey maps and local history sites (a few couldn’t be located exactly due to incomplete records). The map was now ready to launch!

It is with great excitement, then, that this blog announces the launch of the online map that reveals the details of the sailors who lost their lives during this momentous First World War battle between two of the world’s biggest navies of that time. We hope you find it a fascinating tool for understanding the extent to which the Battle of Jutland impacted Portsmouth and the local area. The map also demonstrates that there are further opportunities for plotting the effect of other events and battles on contemporary maps. Ideas for future projects are therefore welcome!

Click the following link to access the map: http://porttowns.port.ac.uk/jutland-map/index.html

Rob James is Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Social History at the University. He is one of the founding members of the Port Towns and Urban Cultures research group.

John Bolt is a PhD student at the University. His doctoral thesis evaluates the cultural and social history of the Royal Marines.

June 27, 2017
#Outreach: A case study of the Portsmouth History Centre’s Outreach.

“Nicola’s dissertation was a fantastic piece of original and innovative research. Drawing on a wide base of archival and museums literature, Nicola’s dissertation shone a light on the outreach initiatives of local authority archives (an area which has not received a great deal of attention in comparison to community archives) and used the Portsmouth History Centre as an in-depth case study. Nicola’s original analysis of social media alongside ‘traditional’ forms of outreach illuminated both the benefits and drawbacks of current practice and provided a basis for sound suggestions for future initiatives.” – Dr Jessica Moody, Nicola’s dissertation supervisor.

My dissertation was inspired by my volunteering role within the Portsmouth History Centre archives. This was originally a placement for the History Workplace unit coordinated by Dr Jessica Moody, and I often had to explore how the archives compared to museums. From this I found that the History Centre was not engaging with the public and their users as much as museums were. Further reading found that local archives in general did not tend to deal with this topic in the way national or community archives were considered so I decided to look into the outreach done by the Portsmouth History Centre.

Looking at the outreach of the archives allowed me to follow my focus on how society engages with history in the present. I used sources such as Twitter and Facebook posts and council websites to see how the archives interacted with their users now that society spends the majority of its time online. My research also involved conducting interviews with members of the council and the Portsmouth History Centre. This meant creating my own questions, conducting the interview and then transcribing the audio. From this I found that the Portsmouth archives specifically tend to use older forms of outreach such as giving talks or producing literature as opposed to using social media as national archives or museums tend to. However, this is not entirely down to their choice. While many of their users do not tend to use online tools, it is hard for them to actually get online. Their social media is tied into the library service and they do not get constant exposure. Their website also has to adhere to council rules and this means there is no room for customisation. Widely it was found that this is due to lack of funding which is also an issue that national archives and museums are facing.

Writing a dissertation is a stressful but rewarding process. It is harder to find sources for an under-researched area. As the archive did not always use social media, my dissertation had to discuss a lot of ‘ifs’. Therefore I used interviews to hear what the people involved in the archive were actually thinking about outreach in their service. I struggled with creating questions for my interviews, as well as with knowing who to interview. In addition, arranging meetings took a lot of time.

While dealing with an under-researched area seemed scary at first, it actually allowed me to make stronger conclusions. Also, the process of doing my own interviews was really rewarding. I was able to create my own primary documents and see how they either fitted or disagreed with the conclusions I found in my reading. Advice from my tutor, Jessica, was essential in getting through the interviews and dissertation as a whole. My dissertation was a key talking point in my interviews for Masters courses and has actually helped me decide on a career within archives in the future.

Nicola Stopp is a BA History student at the University of Portsmouth and has been accepted onto the Archives and Records Management MA at the University of Liverpool.

June 14, 2017
Personal Experiences of D-Day: Told through the words of the veterans by Jessica Harper and Katy Hodges

Jessica Harper and Katy Hodges, third year history students at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on the research they conducted as part of a final year group research project. Along with fellow final year students Hannah Coulouras and Phillip Gerrish, Jessica and Katy looked into veterans’ experiences of D-Day in June 1944. As well as presenting their findings as part of the unit’s assessment, the students also gave a public presentation at Portsmouth City Museum. The final year group research unit is co-ordinated by Dr Robert James, Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural History at Portsmouth.

Personal Experiences of D-Day: Told Through the Words of the Veterans

As part of our final year research project we worked with the D-Day Museum, looking at the personal experiences of the veterans involved. The D-Day Museum holds a wealth of material on the campaign – we didn’t realise how much until we started looking through it – but we decided to focus on the sources that gave a personal perspective, such as letters, diaries, and interviews. We studied four different source types, comparing and contrasting them in order to assess issues such as change over time and national differences. We had the privilege of sharing our research with the university and the wider public, in the form of a presentation at Portsmouth’s City Museum, with the aim of provoking further research into the veterans’ personal experiences. These experiences can be put in conjunction with other historical writing on D-Day, which is principally coming from a military perspective, in order to create a ‘whole’ history of the event.

The first type of source we assessed was the letters and diaries written during 1944, surrounding the build up and duration of D-Day. To physically hold these contemporary artefacts, which are accessible in the Museum’s archive, made the experiences expressed in the letters and diaries feel more relatable and allowed us to make a connection with the veterans who wrote them. These personal sources reveal the great excitement and enthusiasm felt by the men in the lead-up to D-Day, but also hint at the nervousness they felt. For example, one combatant wrote to his wife requesting that she went to church to pray ‘for serenity of mind to face whatever lay ahead’. [1]

The interviews conducted by Cornelius Ryan in 1958 were the second type of source that we analysed. Ryan interviewed a range of people involved in D-Day, from both the allied and enemy forces. We decided to look into the German perspective of the D-Day landings. This gave us a fresh insight into the German experiences of the war, which have not been studied extensively in Britain. It is also a multi-layered source as Ryan took the interviews and then summarised them, resulting in the sources being reliant on Ryan’s personal interpretation. This, then, makes these sources incredibly unique, providing a new outlook on the German experiences. The sources revealed the great relief felt by the German combatants that the invasion had finally come to a head. ‘Now, let’s get it over with’, were the remarks made by one German soldier at the start of the invasion. [2]

The third type of source we examined was the memoirs of the 1990s and early 2000s, produced by Tony Chapman on behalf of the Landing Craft Association (LCA). These sources are useful as while the veterans – who demonstrated their trust in Chapman, an archivist/historian and member of the LCA, by referring to him as ‘shipmate’ – are able to recollect their experiences felt at the time of D-Day, they also provide a retrospective view. The memoirs and their experiences can then be compared in order to build interlinking stories which connect and develop an under-researched history.

Finally, we evaluated interviews that were conducted in 2014, created as part of the “Normandy Veterans 70 Years On” project. This supplied a source that was based on the memories of the veterans, and also one that was impacted by hindsight. Therefore, the experiences retold were those that had stayed with the veterans throughout the 70-year gap and which were most significant to them, as individuals. These sources are available on the Legasee website (http://www.legasee.org.uk/), making them easily accessible for anyone with an interest in the campaign.

We were able to find similarities and differences between the sources which enabled us to unearth various themes. These included British vs. German experiences, humour vs. trauma, and excitement vs. guilt. Through studying these themes, the issue of the importance of memory was highlighted. The humour and excitement was particularly emphasised in the 1944 sources, demonstrating how the veterans were making light of a confusing situation. Yet, later sources have illustrated how memory can be a fragile concept to work with. This does not mean that these sources are less valuable. They depict how hindsight has allowed these men to reflect on their feelings and how this shaped their experiences, not just during the D-Day invasions, but throughout the rest of their lives. One of the most poignant recollections came from Douglas Turtle. He recalled how bodies were ‘flying all over the place. Heads and shoulders and arms and legs, all over the place. It brings it all back, it’s terrible. Seeing all these men killed, what for, what for?’. [3]

Working in conjunction with the D-Day Museum has been incredibly enjoyable and useful for our studies. It has provided us with four different source types which were easily interlinkable and interesting to analyse. The public presentation at Portsmouth City Museum allowed us to expand on our findings and research further into the personal experiences of the veterans. It has been a great experience to present our hard work and provide the public with a fresh insight into D-Day, with the hope that we were able to provoke their thoughts about not only the military side of the campaign, but also the individual impact of D-Day on the veterans themselves.

Hannah Coulouras, Jessica Harper, Phillip Gerrish and Katy Hodges presenting their findings to visitors at Portsmouth City Museum.

Notes

[1] H540/1990. Diana Holdsworth, Ramsbury, Wiltshire. Letter written to wife, 4 June 1944. D-Day Museum archive.

[2] Lt Carl Saul, Cornelius Ryan interviews, 1958. D-Day Museum archive.

[3] Douglas Turtle, interview held on Legasee website, http://www.legasee.org.uk/, last accessed 25 May 2017.

June 6, 2017