Glen O’Hara talk on ‘The Fight against Seaborne, Oil and Beach Pollution in Post-War Britain’, 19th May

Glen O’Hara, author of Britain and the Sea since 1600 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), is coming to Greenwich on talk about ‘The Fight against Seaborne, Oil and Beach Pollution in Post-War Britain’.

Date: Thursday 19 May 2016 at 6.00 pm.

Venue: University of Greenwich, Room QA 075 (Edinburgh Room), Queen Anne Court Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, London SE10 9LS.

The talk is free – you can register at Eventbrite or just turn up.

‘The Fight against Seaborne, Oil and Beach Pollution in Post-War Britain:

Pollution was not a high priority in the first years after the Second World War. Britain’s coastline and estuaries were often littered with wartime detritus: many inshore and inland waters were highly polluted or indeed toxic and lifeless. Biodiversity and levels of marine life had both fallen rapidly in many areas. A mix of austerity and localism meant that concerted action was almost impossible. But the damage done by the east coast floods of 1953, pressure exerted by increasingly-popular pressure groups pushing for better access to safer amenities, and the shock of oil disasters such as the wreck of the Torrey Canyon in 1967, helped created a new, integrated and urgent sense of ‘the environment’. This involved both accounting for and addressing the manifold dangers of Britain’s polluted seas, and began the long centrally-directed cleanup that continues into the twenty-first century.

 

OilShells

Photo: Oil covered shells,  International Maritime Organization ©. Reproduced from Flickr under a Creative Commons Licence .

Glen O’Hara is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Oxford Brookes University. He is the author of Britain and the Sea since 1600 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). For further information about Glen, please go to http://www.social-sciences.brookes.ac.uk/People/Academic/prof.asp?ID=600. Follow him on Twitter @gsoh31

This talk is part of the History & Environment series presented by the Raphael Samuel History Centre in conjunction with the University of Greenwich, Dept of History, Politics and Social Sciences. This year’s series theme is Britain and the Sea. To find out more about the RSHC History and Environment Seminars in general, please contact George Yerby george.yerby@googlemail.com. For more information on these Greenwich RHSC seminars, please contact: Vanessa Taylor V.J.Taylor@greenwich.ac.uk

Greenwich Maritime Research Seminars

Don’t forget to come along to the Greenwich Maritime Research Seminars convened by the Greenwich Maritime Centre and the National Maritime Museum.

 

GMRS Cover

 

The next talk is:

Wednesday 27th April 2016

4pm-5pm

National Maritime Museum, Seminar Room 

by

Dr Michael Talbot, University of Greenwich

‘To protect the coasts from pirate brigands’: Ottoman anti-piracy measures in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1718-70

 

This paper will examine the development of deterrent and protective naval patrols by the Ottoman navy in the Aegean and Levant seas against domestic pirates, Maltese corsairs, and European privateers. These were partly in response to demands for  protection from Ottoman provincial subjects and partly due to a developing sense of maritime territoriality.

‘Britain and the Sea’ – Free to attend seminar series at Greenwich

sea boat shells

Raphael Samuel History Centre
in collaboration with

University of Greenwich

presents

HISTORY & ENVIRONMENT TALKS
‘Britain and the Sea’

About these talks
This seminar series is organized by the Raphael Samuel History Centre in conjunction with the Dept of History, Politics and Social Sciences,
Univ. of Greenwich

sea

3 December 2015

Greg Bankoff (Hull)
England’s Maritime Empire and the
World Aeolian System

boat

3 March 2016

Tim Acott (Greenwich)
& Julie Urquhart (Imperial)Heritage, Memory and Small-ScaleFisheries:A Sense of Place Perspective

shells

19 May 2016

Glen O’Hara (Oxford Brookes)
The Fight against Seaborne, Oil and
Beach Pollution in Post-War Britain

Seminars are free to attend and all are welcome! 

Location 

Room 075 (Edinburgh Room), Queen Anne Court University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College
Park Row, London SE10 9LS

[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d2484.57163428271!2d-0.003972749999964521!3d51.48437675000002!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x4876029cc470b781%3A0x4b452e3ef1ee6b90!2sLondon+SE10+9LS!5e0!3m2!1sen!2suk!4v1442587116705&w=600&h=450]

For more information on these Greenwich RHSC seminars, please contact: Vanessa Taylor V.J.Taylor@greenwich.ac.uk

On the RSHC History and Environment Seminars in general, please contact:
George Yerby george.yerby@googlemail.com

Maritime Historian to Present at Hawksmoor Lecture Series – Peter van der Merwe

Pieter van der Merwe of the National Maritime Museum will be giving a maritime history presentation as part of the Unviersity of Greenwich Hawksmoor Lecture Series next week and we would like to invite you to attend.

The lecture will take place in our new University of Greenwich building on Stockwell Street in Greenwich town centre (opposite Café Rouge). http://www2.gre.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/465729/Greenwich.pdf

Booking is not required, the seminar is free to attend and drinks will be available afterwards. Staff on the reception desk will let you know where the Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre is.

This is just one of a new programme of maritime seminars that the Faculty of Architecture, Computing & Humanties will be hosting over the next few months and we hope to see you there!

Hawksmoor International Lecture Series

Pieter van der Merwe

Thursday 19th March 2015

 

Tessa Blackstone Lecture Hall 6.30pm

Reception drinks served afterwards

 

 Pieter van der Merwe read Drama at the Universities of Manchester (1967–71) and Bristol (PhD 1979). Nautical interests led to him joining the staff of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, in 1974 and, as it General Editor since the early 1990s, he has been editor and author / joint author of many NMM publications – including an illustrated history of the Queen’s House, Greenwich, in 2012. In addition, as its Greenwich Curator, he was involved in both the early development of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site (inscribed by UNESCO in 1997) and remains so in aspects of its on-going management. His other published journal and exhibition contributions have included maritime art and archaeology, and theatre (primarily scene-painting and related public exhibitions). He was appointed MBE in the New Year Honours 2012 for services to heritage and the local community in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, a Deputy Lieutenant of Greater London in October 2012 and has been Representative DL for Greenwich since January 2013.

Professor Sarah Palmer to present ‘Congestion, Shortage and Loss: the Port of London in the Great War’ in the Great War Greenwich Series

Capture

 

Aerial portrait of the Thames painted during the First World War

Capture 1

Capture 2

great war series