Ships and boats: general interest

Cork Harbour, at the mouth of the River Lee, is one of the largest natural harbours in the world.

2008 was a magical year for Cunard.

The islands surrounding Scapa Flow made one of Britain's best natural harbours, while the location at the north of Scotland protected the approaches to the North Sea and Atlantic.

Services from mainland Scotland to Orkney and Shetland were, from the dawn of steam navigation right up until 2002, in the hands of the North of Scotland, Orkney & Shetland Shipping Company, known as the North Company, whose predecessors dated back to 1790 and which became part of P&O Ferries in 1975.

On 9 January 1972, the mighty Queen Elizabeth, then the largest liner in the world, caught fire in Hong Kong harbour.

In 1908, the White Star Line announced it was constructing a pair of sister ships at the Harland & Wolff yard in Belfast.

The quest for the Water Speed Record is one of the most dangerous, least forgiving and most unheralded of endeavours.

Built at the end of the Depression and launched on the weekend of the Munich Crisis, the Queen Elizabeth's maiden voyage was a wartime dash to New York to escape the Luftwaffe's bombs.

Since man first inhabited the United Kingdom, he has fished for food.

The 1950s and 1960s was the last golden age of ocean liners.

The Broads Through Time is a unique insight into the illustrious history of this part of Norfolk.

In the 1950s, Britain's waterways were still full of commercial traffic and lined with the mills, factories and ports of a then-leading industrial nation.

This is the first half of a detailed history of sand dredging in the Bristol Channel - the result of over thirty years' research.

Pembroke Dock Through Time is a unique insight into the illustrious history of this part of the country.

Joseph John William Gaster (Jack), was born within the chimes of the Bow Bells in August 1923.

The Cromford Canal ran 14.

The Royal Military Canal was one of only two waterways built in Great Britain by the Government.

This is the second half of a detailed history of sand dredging in the Bristol Channel - the result of over thirty years' research.

Unlike in the rest of the United Kingdom the pier in Scotland has always seen as functional rather than as a pleasure pier.

It was one of the most important British liner routes of all - the express run from Southampton to the South African Cape.

To Western Scottish Waters: By Rail & Steamer to the Isles is a pictorial tour through the decades and a peek into how both people and goods have travelled to the Isles over the years.

For the past two hundred years, lifeboats have been stationed around the coasts of Britain and Ireland, ready to rescue the shipwrecked.

It was a golden age of travel.

Telling the story of the once-ubiquitous Lancashire Nobby, a handsome sailing trawler that was once found in every harbour from West Wales to the West Coast of Scotland.

Sailing, boat owning and living on a Thames spritsail barge have coursed through the veins of the skipper's family since the early 1930s, and it instilled in him a profound love for salt, marsh and mud.

At different times of the year, herring were found in commercial numbers in the North Sea, the Moray Firth, the Minches, the Firth of Clyde, the Irish Sea and the English Channel.

Flat-bottom craft have always been fascinating, largely because they appear so simple in their construction at first glance, made by the farmers and fishermen who used them.

If you mention the subject of pleasure steamers on the rivers Thames and Medway, you can be certain that most people will remember with fond nostalgia the well-loved steamers Royal Daffodil, Royal Sovereign and Queen of the Channel.

Entering service in 1938, the Nieuw Amsterdam was the Holland America Line flagship until the construction of the Rotterdam in the late 1950s.

Overshadowing the port of Chester, Liverpool grew in size from the 1800s on sugar and slavery.

No other moving object has carried as many people in one voyage (over 16,000).

Queen Elizabeth 2: The Last Great Liner tells the story of the Cunard liner.

On October 20, 1910, RMS Olympic was launched at Belfast.

Many people remember with great fondness the pleasure steamers that plied the River Thames in the years after the end of the Second World War.

When Titanic sailed on her maiden voyage she carried two cousins.

The Port of Southampton saw many changes in the 1960s and 1970s.

'Port of Southampton' is the story of the Hampshire port from Roman times to the present day, illustrated by a colelction of images showing everything from seaman's strikes to shipwrecks, the Titanic and Queen Mary, as well as the other famous ocean liners that have called at the port since the 1840s.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, the Port of London was the busiest in the world.

Wales is known for its green hills and valleys, narrow gauge steam railways and medieval castles, but not, it appears, for its pleasure piers.

From Gigha in the south to Lewis in the north and St Kilda in the west, Alistair Deayton covers the piers of the Hebrides and other outlying islands in the companion volume to his West Highland Piers.

Despite their popular association with fun and frivolity, the function of piers as both an amusement centre and landing stage was varied, and nowhere was this better illustrated than on the coasts of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and east Dorset.

In 1837, P&O, or the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company, won a lucrative mail contract to the Iberian peninsula.

In 1995, P&O introduced the 70,000grt Oriana into service.

Pleasure steamer cruises along the scenic North Wales coast from Liverpool disappeared some fifty years ago.

For well over a hundred years all around the coast of Britain there were located a series of nautical training ships.

Built in 1949 in Southampton for the Southampton, Isle of Wight & South of England Royal Mail Steam Packet Co.

In this charming sequel to the successful local best-seller Salt Marsh & Mud, the skipper and his mate meander gently around the coastline of East Anglia, exploring the marshland from North Kent to Suffolk in their tan-sailed, wooden clinker sloop, Whimbrel.

From Whitstable, with its oyster beds and fishing fleet, to Chatham and Rochester, the Medway and Swale areas have seen a diverse variety of shipping over the years, from the fishing smacks to men of war, Thames barges, sailing vessels, submarines, pleasure steamers, ferries and cargo ships.

It is now just over a century since Lusitania made her maiden crossing of the North Atlantic.

The Pier Head and landing stages have been places where the people of Liverpool have been able to view, participate in and enjoy many of the major maritime celebrations and events of the last hundred years.