A Royal Navy 28 gun frigate c1794

Maritime history

Boats clash at sea in this illustration of the 480 BC battle of Salamis, fought between a Persian army led by King Xerxes I and the Greek army led by Themistocles

Salamis, 480 BC: a horror at sea for the Persian empire

A trieme is rowed towards a naval battle in a scene depicting the battle of Aegospotami in 405 BC

The ancient Greeks at war: hoplites, the phalanx and the greatest battles

“A dead whale or a stove boat”: whaling in the 19th century.

Allied convoy PQ 17 is attacked by a German torpedo aircraft on its way across the Arctic Ocean, c1942. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

“The worst journey in the world”: the Arctic convoys of the Second World War.

The Spanish Armada: everything you wanted to know.

The Special Boat Service: WW2’s silent heroes.

Portrait of English admiral Lord Horatio Nelson

Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson: a rebel with a cause

Fridtjof Nansen: Explorer, scientist, writer, humanitarian

The first great polar expedition: Fridtjof Nansen’s 1888 traverse of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Titanic: everything you wanted to know.

The battle of Sandwich: England’s medieval Trafalgar.

QuizHow well do you know your warships?.

An aerial view of Tahiti

Jeanne Baret: the first known woman to circumnavigate the globe.

The golden age of piracy: everything you wanted to know.

The crew of SMS King in its home port following the battle of the Skagerrak, June 1916. (Photo by A Renard/ullstein image via Getty Images)

First World War

Jutland: the battle that won the First World War

A 19th-century engraving depicts a member of the crew of the 'Mignonette'

Cannibalism at sea: the starving Victorian sailors who ate a cabin boy

The German battleship Bismarck of the German Kriegsmarine during early World War II

Second World War

Bismarck: why was the WW2 German battleship so feared? Plus 9 things you didn’t know about its only mission

Explorer Ferdinand Magellan

Dire straits: the story of Ferdinand Magellan's fatal voyage of discovery

A German sailor signals Bismarck during manoeuvres in the western Atlantic, some time before the British gave chase. The maimed battleship sank below the waves on 27 May 1941

Second World War

The sinking of the Bismarck: a cat and mouse chase across the Atlantic

Mutiny at sea: the forgotten story of murder and brutality aboard HMS Wager

The exact location at which John Cabot came ashore in North America is the subject of debate. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

A tale of Tudor travel: John Cabot's voyage to America.

A union flag flown on HMS Queen Charlotte at the battle known as the Glorious First of June, 1794

Q&AWhen was the Union Jack or Union flag created?

The mystery of the vanishing lighthouse keepers.

What happened to the Franklin Expedition? The real mystery behind The Terror.

'Pirate queen' Grace O'Malley. (Illustration by Sue Gent for BBC History Revealed)

Grace O’Malley: the fearless pirate queen of Ireland

A 19th-century depiction of HMS Erebus in the ice, by François Etienne Musin. What exactly happened to the ship and its crew remains a mystery. (Picture by Alamy)

The Franklin Expedition: what happened on the ill-fated Victorian voyage?

The shipwreck that sunk a royal dynasty.

An Australian Sea Shanty band, c1988

A brief history of sea shanties

Statue of Leif Erikson (Leifur Erikssonn) in front of Eric the Red's home. (Photo by Draper White, Getty Images)

Leif Erikson’s voyage to Vinland

Charles Darwin and the Beagle: how the voyage transformed our understanding of the world

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

Nelson in his own words.