Traditionally, the history of English maritime adventures has focused on the great sea captains and swashbucklers. However, over the past few decades, social historians have begun to examine the less well-known seafarers who wereon the dangerous voyages of commerce, exploration, privateering and piracy, as well as naval campaigns.

This book brings together some of their findings. There is no comparable work that provides such an overview of our knowledge of English seamen during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the tumultuous world in which they lived.

Subjects covered include trade, piracy, wives, widows and the wider maritime community, health and medicine at sea, religion and shipboard culture, how Tudor and Stuart ships were manned and provisioned, and what has been learned from the important wreck the Mary Rose.

CHERYL A. FURY is Professor of History at the University of New Brunswick, and on the editorial board of Northern Mariner [the Canadian journal of maritime history].

Contributors: J.D. ALSOP, JOHN APPLEBY, CHERYL A. FURY, GEOFFREY HUDSON, DAVID LOADES, VINCENT PATARINO JR, ANN STIRLAND.