Focused on both naval and mercantile marine contexts, the conference at the National Maritime Museum will place the experience of the maritime war within the historical settings of the years preceding and following the conflict. Conference themes will provide a forum for interdisciplinary research and new perspectives on the subject.
Keynote speakers
Professors Andrew Lambert, King’s College London; Jan Rüger, Birkbeck, University of London and Matthew Seligmann, Brunel, University of London.
This conference is held in partnership with Gateways to the First World War, an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded centre for public engagement with the First World War Centenary.
Conference costs and booking
Price: £150 | £120 - seniors, students and Members | £75 - speakers
Tickets can be booked here.
What should I expect?
The conference fee includes refreshments and lunch on all three days as well as a reception on Thursday evening.
Thursday
Global contexts of commemoration
The memorialisation of African, Asian and Caribbean seamen after WWI; Commemorating WWI in a neutral country; The Battle of the Coronel
Strategy and Power Projection
German Naval Policy during the Great War; Lessons in modern power projection
Social histories
African and Arab merchant seamen interned in Germany during the Great War; Lascar seafarers in the First World War; The Mixed Crews of Portugal and Britain
War and culture: journalism
The First World War at Sea in the fiction of a British Boys’ magazine; British Newspapers and the Battle of Jutland; the story of the Dreadnought in The War Illustrated, 1914-1918
Friday
The naval war: lessons learned
Reflection, Ritual, and Innovation: The Jutland War Game and the Interwar Education of Navy Leaders at the Naval War College; The Great War at Sea: The Search for Meaning
The non-British maritime war
Submarine attacks, shipwrecked people and Allied Navy pressures. Argentina impossible neutrality during WWI; Otranto: The Adriatic Sea as a Battlefield in World War I and the Hungarian Remembrance of the Battles of the Strait of Otranto; The Strait of Messina during the First World War
Naval archaeology and material legacies of the war
Cromarty Firth – ‘a great war harbour’; Commemorating the War at Sea: 1914–18 U-boat Project; Where history and archaeology diverge: the German submarine war through official history and U-boat wrecks today
Gender and the maritime war
The Women’s Royal Naval Service Old Comrades Association, 1919–39; Seafaring laundresses in WWI; When Women Join the U.S. Navy
Saturday
British contexts of commemoration
Remembering Sailors and Airmen of the First World War; The Imperial War Graves Commission and the War at Sea; The Significance of the Manning Port Memorials; Royal and merchant navy memorials of the First World War
War and culture: literature
The Great War at Sea in children's books and magazines, 1914-1935; German Inter-war Literature and the First World War at Sea; How advertisers sold everything from toothpaste to ladies’ garters, using images of the Royal Navy, 1914-1918
Challenges to institutional practices
Temporary Admiralty offices in the First World War, bombing, and the geography of naval administration; Converting the British Royal Navy from Coal to Oil and Its Impact on Eurasian Geopolitics and Naval Warfare, 1911-1918
Full programme
The outline above gives a flavour of the conference, which includes parallel sessions throughout the three days. Please see here for the full programme, and please note this is a draft version and subject to change.
The First World War at Sea - Draft Programme
