Exploiting The Sea
Aspects of Britain's Maritime Economy since 1870

Exploiting the Sea offers new perspectives on Britain's vital but changing relationship with the sea since the late nineteenth century. It assesses the significance to the British economy of sea-reliant industries such as shipping, shipbuilding, fishing, coastal trading and seaside tourism. It also seeks to explain why the clear pre-eminence that Britain established in the maritime world during the Victorian era has not been sustained in the twentieth century.

Exploiting the Sea is a new volume in the highly successful series EXETER MARITIME STUDIES, and brings together contributions from experts writing in their own specialist fields to give a wide-ranging but structured analytical approach to a misunderstood subject.

Contributions by
John Armstrong, Janet Cusack, Brian Dyson, Andrew Gordon, Anthony Gorst, Alan G. Jaimeson, Lewis Johnman, Nigel J. Morgan, Sidney Pollard, Robb Robinson and David J. Starkey

Contents: Introduction - the maritime dimension of the British economy, David J. Starkey; climax and climacteric - the British coastal trade 1870-1930, John Armstrong; Britain's shipping interests since 1930, Alan G. Jamieson; dockyards and dockyard towns 1880-1939; naval procurement and the British shipbuilding industry 1945-1964, Lewis Johnman and Anthony Gorst; Cornish fish and Norwegian ice, Tony Pawlyn; the development of the British distant-water trawling industry 1890-1939, Robb Robinson; yachting and aquatic recreation 1890-1960, Janet Cusack; 20th-century seaside tourism strategies, Nigel Morgan; British shipping and the British economy since 1870 - a retrospective view, Sidney Pollard.

Alan G. Jamieson is Leverhulme Research Fellow in British Maritime History in the Centre for Maritime Historical Studies, University of Exeter. David J Starkey graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in Economic History. He then gained an MA in the History of the Atlantic Economy at the University of Exeter, which led to doctoral research into the character, scale and significance of British privateering in the eighteenth century. Having gained his PhD, Dr Starkey was appointed Research Fellow in the Maritime History of Devon project at the University of Exeter, an appointment that was followed by two further research fellowships in maritime history at Exeter.

In 1994, Dr Starkey joined the History Department at Hull when he became the holder of the first permanent lectureship to be dedicated to maritime historical studies in the UK university sector - the Wilson Family Lectureship in Maritime History.

Dr Starkey is Director of the Maritime Historical Studies Centre at the University of Hull.