Down to the Sea in Ships : Of ageless oceans and modern men
- Submitting institution
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The University of Manchester
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 112581639
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Chatto & Windus
- ISBN
- 978-0099526292
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- January
- Year of publication
- 2014
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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A - SALC
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- 'Down to the Sea in Ships' tells the story of the largely unseen and unconsidered shipping industry which sustains the world we know. Built around voyages on container ships from Felixstowe to Los Angeles via Suez, and Antwerp to Montreal (on a rotten ship in mid-winter), it offers representative accounts of men (an overwhelmingly male environment), ships, ports and the trading oceans. It is a layered text of travel, reportage, nature, place and profile writing, addressing maritime history, law and practice, masculinity, labour (including widespread malpractice and exploitation) and the environment (shipping produces as much CO2 as the seventh most polluting country). Researching seagoing took Clare into the anthropology archives of Exeter University (from the Neolithic, bonds formed between crews and leaders in sewn plank boats were central to the organisation of certain societies, and the emergence of elites), many libraries and to the archive of the Mission to Seafarers in Hull. Selected from thousands of pages of research, the book cites numerous accounts relating to the routes Clare travelled, from U-boat captains in the Atlantic to Coleridge’s description of the Strait of Gibraltar. Interviewees included ship owners, sea priests, captains, engineers and dozens of seafarers. Particularly interesting was the emergence within the company Clare studied (AP Moller-Maersk) of a racial-feudal pyramid, with well-paid white European captains and senior officers at the top, European and Asian officers in the middle, and Filipino seafarers at the base – earning as little as $700 a month on 13-month contracts, many hardly come ashore. They have developed a distinct maritime subculture. The book argues passionately for the better treatment of seafarers: their lonely and perilous world in largely free of oversight, unions or journalistic scrutiny. Clare spent over two months at sea. The book took two years and runs to 285 pages.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
