History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | maritime

Hans Holbein ship with sailors

Cut-throat communities, angry noblemen, and a noseless pirate! My journey through the joys and horrors of writing a dissertation

Below, the first of a series on this year’s bumper crop of student dissertations, from my own supervisee Tom Underwood.  Tom was one of the most prepared and organised students I’ve ever supervised, but as he mentions below, also still honing his dissertation down to the wire, and we were blown away with the results.  Tom is planning to continue onto an MRes, where his impressive skills at reading early modern handwriting, and patience with sifting his way through basement archives should come to further good use. – ed Whether its Errol Flynn’s smooth-talking Captain Blood, or Johnny Depp’s rum-soaked Jack Sparrow, the pirate occupies a special place within popular […]

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BOSTON, MA - APRIL 21: Chanting, "We're going to stop rape now," a coalition of women's groups gathered in Downtown Crossing in Boston on April 21, 1984, to protest the treatment of the victim in the highly publicized New Bedford barroom rape trial. The demonstration came one month after four men were convicted of raping a 21-year-old mother on a pool table in Big Dan's tavern in New Bedford. The case drew nationwide publicity when police reported that others in the bar cheered during the attack. The trial was broadcast daily on cable television. (Photo by Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

A Heritage Lottery Fund Grant for the University of Portsmouth for an Oral History Project on Women’s Activism Since 1960

Dr Sue Bruley, Reader in Modern History at Portsmouth, has won a large grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to research women’s activism in Portsmouth since 1960. The project will investigate the many struggles women faced living and working in the naval city. Sue’s research focuses on gender and women’s history in the 20th century, and she teaches a special subject on ‘Gender, Sexuality and War 1922-80’ and an option ‘The First World War, A Social and Gender History’. The University of Portsmouth has been awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £73,300 to research women’s activism in Portsmouth. This project will led by Sue Bruley, Reader in Modern History, […]

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‘A vital part of any university career’: A student’s experience of taking a placement unit

Ian Atkins, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on his experience of doing a work placement at the National Museum of the Royal Navy Library for the Public History Placement Unit. The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Melanie Bassett, Research Assistant for Port Towns and Urban Cultures and Part Time Lecturer in History. The Public History Placement unit, a vital part of any university career, is an option that is available to Second Year Students in the School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies. Encompassing a wide and varied variability of placements the option aims to give an insight into the […]

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‘Read for Victory’: Public Libraries and Book Reading in a British Naval Port City during the Second World War

Dr Robert James, Senior Lecturer in History, has recently published an article in the journal Cultural and Social History on the role of public libraries in the naval town of Portsmouth, UK during the Second World War. See below for the abstract, and if you want to read the article, click here. Abstract: In 1942 a library official in Portsmouth, UK appealed to the city’s inhabitants to ‘read for victory’, believing that they had a duty to use their reading time productively as part of their wartime activities. This article argues that long-standing desires among the country’s political and civic elites to encourage the nation’s readers to spend their leisure time prudently intensified […]

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By photographer not identified - This is photograph Q 114833 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums (collection no. 8502-08 [1]), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2872345

Don’t believe everything you read…

Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in History, recently worked with a local community group, Portsdown U3A, on a Heritage Lottery Funded project that sought to find out the impact of the Battle of Jutland on the people of Portsmouth and the local area. With the help of research assistant and PhD student John Bolt, and a team of Online Course Developers at the University, Dr James created an online map using the data collected by members or Portsdown U3A. One of the most interesting findings made by the U3A when conducting their research was that one celebrated V.C. holder – Commander Loftus William Jones – was born in Portsmouth, not […]

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View of Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, etching by Wenceslas Hollar, 1643, British Museum Print Q, C.100

Portsmouth and the English Civil Wars

Dr Fiona McCall teaches a third year special subject on the British Civil Wars.  Below she looks at events in Portsmouth which give it a good claim to be considered the place where the Civil War broke out. Hampshire saw considerable action during the First Civil War (1642-6), being sandwiched between the area of Parliamentary control in the South and East, and the South-West, which was controlled by the Royalists for most of the first war.   One of the first major sieges took place here at Portsmouth, and one of the last, further north at Basing. Other notable actions occurred at Winchester, at Alton church, Cheriton, and just over the […]

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