Maritime history

Photo of statue of Leif Erikson

Leif Erikson’s voyage to Vinland

Nelson stands in the Nile culling crocodiles in James Gillray's cartoon 'Extirpation of the Plagues of Egypt' (1798). The crocodiles represent captured or destroyed French ships at the battle of the Nile, while Nelson is cast as a cross between Moses and Hercules. (Archiv Gerstenberg/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Admiral Lord Nelson: 10 days that created a legend

Nelson's passion for Emma – with whom he had a six-year affair – is writ large in his letters

Nelson in his own words

Edith Hall on the HistoryExtra podcast.

General ancient history

The ‘lost’ city of Atlantis

Podcast Winch Simon Parkin Web large

Second World War

A secret WW2 wargame

The White Ship disaster

Charles Spencer on the White Ship disaster, “the most disastrous moment in British maritime history”

The Oseberg ship from around AD 820 is one of the most well- preserved Viking ships ever excavated

Viking ships: 5 lesser-known facts

Professor Jan Bill on the HistoryExtra podcast.

At sea with the Vikings

A painting by Louis Philippe Crepin depicting the battle of Trafalgar, 1805. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

The battle of Trafalgar, hour by hour: what happened and why did Britain win?

The ‘Pilgrims’ stride onto American soil in 1620 after crossing the Atlantic on the Mayflower, as shown in a 20th-century painting by WJ Aylward (Photo by Getty Images)

The Mayflower

Pilgrim Fathers boarding the Mayflower

5 facts about the Mayflower

A late 18th-century painting of British and French sailors going head-to-head at war

The uncommon lives of common sailors

The Pilgrim fathers arrive at Plymouth, Massachusetts on board the Mayflower. (Photo by Harold M. Lambert/Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

“They decided that God must be leading them to North America”: the Puritans journey to the Mayflower

Mural of the battle of Actium from 1600

Actium, 31 BC: the beginning of the end for Mark Antony and Cleopatra

The arrival of Sir Walter Raleigh in Virginia

What happened to the lost colony of Roanoke Island?