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Thesis ID: CBB001567662

Found at Sea: Mapping Ships on the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Ocean (2014)

Ulrich, Laurel
Harvard University
Ulrich, Laurel
Voskuhl, Adelheid
Williams, Rosalind
Chaplin, Joyce

ISBN: 9781321015621

Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Advisor: Chaplin, Joyce; Committee Members: Ulrich, Laurel, Voskuhl, Adelheid, Williams, Rosalind.
Physical Details: 227 pp.
Language: English

Outside Links

Academia.edu

Cartography Cross-national interaction Travel; exploration Geographic Information Systems (GIS) 18th century Atlantic Ocean France United States Great Britain

"Found at Sea" is a historical study centered on the Atlantic Ocean. This dissertation employs ships' logbooks in combination with a GIS mapping methodology to address the ocean, itself, as a site for historical developments. Eighteenth-century mariners sailed the ocean in more varied ways than historians have previously described. This dissertation demonstrates that the Atlantic Ocean of the late eighteenth century was a highly-populated, very social, international space. It was normal for a ship to see another ship about half of the days while it was at sea. During peacetime these sightings could lead to friendly exchanges of news, food, and even spare parts in case of emergency. During wartime, shipping patterns adjusted to reflect new trading alliances and the threat of enemy vessels. This dissertation tracks American seafarers' experiences during the Revolutionary War, the relative peace of the late 1780s, and the Quasi-War between the United States and France to investigate how the human geography of the sea changed over time. The ocean was not an entirely isolating place but rather a place with a unique form of society. The ocean separated private individuals from the intermediate institutions that usually stood between them and international relations. Mariners on the high seas consistently related to international affairs on an immediate, local scale, the same way they related to the winds or the conditions of their ships. This maritime conflation of the local with the international is essential to understanding relations among maritime powers during this period. The dissertation contributes to current scholarship in early American history and the Atlantic World by treating the Atlantic Ocean as more than an abstracted connector for the surrounding continents. It contributes to the history of navigation by investigating the role of logbooks as instruments within a complex navigational system that directly preceded the use of chronometers. It also suggests that instrumental sources like logbooks are particularly well suited to digital humanities scholarship, because digital methods enable researchers to consider more closely the numerical portions of these sources that often go ignored.

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Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 75/10(E), Apr 2015. Proquest Document ID: 1557761528.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567662/

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