Maritime history

Engraving showing flying fish leaping over a Spanish trade ship

Winds of change: how the discovery of trade winds powered Europe’s empires

Historian Saul David

Second World War

Saul David “It was astonishing bravery – and cold-blooded bravery, too”

A mermaid combing her hair

General Early Modern

Tails from the deep: separating the real folklore of mermaids from Disney stories

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

BBC/See-Saw Films/Nick Wall

“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)

Second World War

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

Robert Hutchinson answers your questions on England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. (Image by Getty Images)

The Spanish Armada: everything you wanted to know

Saul David discusses his new history of the Special Boat Service – a daring maritime unit that played a crucial role in Allied victory in WW2.

Second World War

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

Tim Maltin answers listener questions about the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912. (Image by Getty Images)

Titanic: everything you wanted to know

English sailors engage the French invasion fleet at the battle of Sandwich in 1217.

The battle of Sandwich: England’s medieval Trafalgar

The feared WW2 German battleship 'Bismarck', May 1941. (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Quiz How well do you know your warships?

An aerial view of Tahiti

Jeanne Baret: the first known woman to circumnavigate the globe