Bøker utgitt av ROYAL MUSEUMS GREENWICH

Jacqueline Bishop's ceramic tea service The Keeper of All The Secrets is a new commission that will go on display in the Queen's House at Royal Museums Greenwich in early 2025. Featuring the image of the market woman and various plants known to induce abortion, the service is a comment on colonialism, empire and the position of women in society. The fi gure of the market woman is a well-known symbol of the plantation system, but litt le has been written on her signifi cance. She performed an illicit resistance to the plantation system, secretly assisting in the regulation of menstrual cycles and illegally terminating unwanted pregnancies, many of which are known to have been the result of rape by enslavers. This book, also featuring new poetry by Bishop and an interview, situates the market woman within the context of Caribbean enslavement and the tea trade. The tea service will be considered alongside other items in the Museum's collection relating to colonialism and empire and provides a lens through which contemporary debates on the present-day impacts of these issues can be explored.

This is the story of Charles Hare and his audacious escape from the fortress of Sarre-Libre (Sarre-Louis), then part of France, aft er six years as a prisoner of war. Hare was a midshipman in the Royal Navy who had been captured by the French in 1803 at the age of just thirteen. He escaped by impersonating an off icer in the Douanes, the French customs service. Remarkably, the uniform that he wore as a disguise survives and has recently entered the collection of Royal Museums Greenwich, along with a copy of Hare's autobiographical account of his adventures. Having undergone extensive conservation, the uniform will be on display from October 2024 in the National Maritime Museum's 'Nelson, Navy, Nation' gallery. Through detailed photography and a range of complementary objects, curator Dr Katherine Gazzard tells the deeply personal and unique story of Hare, tracking his dangerous journey across Europe. She also examines the materials and insignia of the uniform and traces the history of the Douanes from their foundation in the French Revolution to their role as an imperial directorate under Napoleon. The book concludes with a consideration of Hare's experiences within the context of prisoners of war more broadly.

With an apparently unremarkable eighteenth-century glass bott le as its starting point, Sea Sick: Lime Juice and Scurvy explores the history of scurvy, its symptoms, causes and the fi ght against it. Conservative estimates indicate that the disease took the lives of more than two million seafarers between 1500 and 1800, and it has been suggested that scurvy was responsible for more deaths at sea than storms, shipwreck and all other diseases combined during the eighteenth century alone. Curator Lucy Dale breaks the story of scurvy into four parts, considering fi rst the symptoms of the disease and its psychological and physical manifestations, before exploring it in a specifi cally maritime context through notable voyages and individuals who were aff licted. Dale then looks at the oft en haphazard and ineff ective interventions and eff orts to fi nd a cure. She highlights the pioneering experiment by James Lind, Captain Cook's apparent promotion of malt wort, the provisioning of lime juice to the fl eet of the Royal Navy and fi nally the resurgence of scurvy in the Arctic and Antarctic expeditions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The concluding chapter outlines the discovery of vitamin C in the 1930s by Hungarian scientist Albert Szent-Györgi, who received the Nobel Prize in recognition of his work.

Only one man in British history has ever been knighted for services to combat piracy, but his name - unlike those of his adversaries - is practically unknown. In fact, Chaloner Ogle enjoyed a long and distinguished career in the Royal Navy, rising to become Admiral of the Fleet. His spectacular career coincided with the 'golden age' of piracy, when trade in the Atlantic and beyond was threatened by roving bands of sea-robbers. Following a series of incidents on the African coast, Ogle set his sights on one particular robber, Bartholomew Roberts, or 'Black Bart'. The encounter that ensued is recorded in Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates, published in 1724. Struck by grapeshot, which ripped out his throat, Roberts was killed in an instant. Ogle, however, was denied the chance to capture the pirate when Roberts's crew threw his corpse overboard. The body was never recovered. The crew, however, suff ered fates that befell many captured pirates: some were hanged, others were sentenced to indentured labour, practically a life sentence in itself. While the exact details of how the coconut cup at the centre of this publication came to be made are unknown, it is a tantalising link to this period of history. The object will be on display during a major new exhibition at the National Maritime Museum from spring 2025 to early 2026.