As the long war with France enters its eighth year, there is trouble in the Baltic. Napoleon is busy recruiting new allies to cut off Britain's vital trade in naval supplies. Captain Alexander Clay is given a new command, the Royal Navy frigate Griffin, and sent ahead of the British fleet on a vital diplomatic mission. In that cold northern sea, the dangers he face are legion. Snow and ice, French opponents, palace conspiracies and an assassin trained in the orient. Clay and his crew are expert at battling the French, but how will they manage when they are drawn into the murky world of espionage and intrigue?
Exploring the themes of the human relationship with the marine environment and the ways in which the peoples of Northern Europe have experienced and exploited their seas, this book reveals how human perception of the northern seas has changed over time. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, from Denmark and Britain to Norway, Finland and Germany, The Baltic and the North Seas is an insightful and colourful history of the politics, economy and culture of this intriguing region.
The nations bordering the North Sea have always been engaged in a dialogue with water. The sea is the source of livelihoods as well as leisure, industry as well as relaxation. Holidaymakers are not the only ones drawn to the seaside: the currency of both painters and photographers is light, and under Northern skies the best light is often to be found where land joins water. In addition, coastal locations often give urban artists an opportunity to observe life in the raw. North Sea provides the overarching theme for this showcase of vintage and contemporary photography, accompanied by paintings and songs, poetry and prose. Its pages capture both the sublimity of nature and a cast of human subjects, whose lives are placed in perspective by the vastness of the sea. In spite of the changes wrought by history, the fascination of the frontier between land and water remains timeless, and these images stand as a striking testament to the relationship between the sea and the people who live and work alongside it.
Uninterrupted economic relations between England and Scandinavia were of vital importance to the maintenance and extension of the British Empire in the eighteenth century. Scandinavia supplied Britain with the timber to build her ships, with iron for ship-fittings, armaments and industry, and with smuggled tea at low prices to keep her people content. Scandinavia also furnished merchant fleets as neutral carriers for British goods during the Seven Years War, thus fundamentally assisting Britain's war effort. In addition she represented a small but lucrative market for Britain who was herself the largest single market for Sweden and Norway, and for the tea obtained from China by the Scandinavian East India Companies. In this study, Dr Kent examines the organization and extent of the legitimate and the smuggling trades, the effect of war and neutrality upon them, and the legal and diplomatic considerations which influenced economic enterprise and policies.
Remote Sensing of Sea Ice in the Northern Sea Route: Studies and Applications initially provides a history of the Northern Sea Route as an important strategic transport route for supporting the northern regions of Russia and cargo transportation between Europe and the Northern Pacific Basin. The authors then describe sea ice conditions in the Eurasian Arctic Seas and, using microwave satellite data, provide a detailed analysis of difficult sea ice conditions. Remote sensing techniques and the basic principles of SAR image formation are described, as well as the major satellite radar systems used for ice studies in the Arctic. The authors take a good look at the use of sensing equipment in experiments, including the ICE WATCH project used for monitoring the Northern Sea Route. The possibilities of using SAR remote sensing for ice navigation in the Northern Sea Route is also detailed, analysing techniques of automatic image processing and interpretation. A study is provided of regional drifting ice, fast ice and river ice in the coastal areas of the Arctic Seas. The book concludes with a review of the practical experience using SAR images for supporting navigation and offshore industrial activity, based on a series of experiments conducted with the Murmansk Shipping Company on board nuclear icebreakers.
The Northern Sea Route and the Economy of the Soviet North (1956) evaluates the commercial value of the route on the basis of a detailed study of the economy of the Soviet North. While the primary focus is on economic, strategic and material grounds, considerable attention is devoted to the non-economic motives for Soviet activity in the Arctic.
This volume is the first study of the entire history of the Northern Sea Route, from its earliest exploration to the twenty-first century. It includes the West-European search for a new waterway to the Orient (sixteenth to seventeenth century), the Russian Kamchatka expeditions (eighteenth century), and the navigation from Europe to the major rivers in north-west Siberia (late nineteenth to early twentieth century), as well as the Russian utilisation of the sea route in the Soviet epoch and later.
This book analyses the current and future viability of the Northern Sea Route as a stable transport route for the international transit traffic between Europe and the Far East. It includes the present conditions, defining and evaluating viability factors for using the Northern Sea Route (NSR). The book makes a projection for NSR in the future, taking into account the climatic change in the Arctic findings presented in the IPCC report. This study, based on the author’s PhD thesis, analyses meteorological, hydrologic, bathymetric and other data for the evaluation of the navigation criteria. It is intended for a wide spectrum of readers, from students and scientists of Earth sciences and polar geography, navigation, political science researchers and politicians interested in Arctic affairs.
