Other Pieces

Sea History 172 (2020): 5.

In June, the Maine Maritime Museum announced its plan “to consider how an institution such as ours can contribute to the dialogue about equity, inclusion, and justice, particularly by raising awareness of how Maine’s maritime enterprise has shaped and been shaped by issues of race, ethnicity, and gender.” Skeptics abound, of course. What can a maritime museum in the whitest state in the country possibly have to say about race in what many incorrectly perceive to be a “white” profession?More

Argonauta 37:2 (2020): 5–8.

Periodic reviews of the state of maritime history suggest that there is a growing awareness of maritime enterprise as a discrete and productive specialty within the wider ambit of the historical discipline, and that practitioners of the subject are following ever-multiplying lines of inquiry. It is especially remarkable to consider how much the field has grown in the seven years that have elapsed since Kelly Chaves, Josh Smith, and I were last invited to offer our views on the subject. Back then, Maurice Smith was concerned about “planning for a long-term healthy future” for the discipline. Seven years is not long-term, but there is no question that the state of maritime history can only be described as healthy—even robust.
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Paine, Old River Control SH
Sea History 167 (2019): 5–6.

While visiting New Orleans in March, I persuaded three siblings and our father to join me on an expedition to visit the Old River Control structure between Lettsworth and Vidalia, Louisiana. If you want to get people to join you on an eight-hour field trip, you need a compelling story. Mine is this: Old River Control is the single most important piece of infrastructure in the United States. It is also the most vulnerable.More

Offing Echoes (Mumbai) (Feb. 2019): 15–22.

Few arenas of human activity have a greater influence on the world today than the maritime industry. Perhaps none does. This is not hyperbole. Rather, it is a simple fact, as attested in three straightforward statistics: The world’s oceangoing fleet carries about 80 percent of world trade by volume. The ocean covers 71 percent of the planet and contains 95 per cent of the world’s water. Yet these plain statements have become dull with repetition, perhaps because what happens on and in the ocean is important almost beyond our ability to comprehend it. As a result, perhaps no line of work is as unacknowledged or underappreciated. A vexing and persistent question for people working in the maritime professions is, How can I make people appreciate the immediate importance of maritime enterprise—what I do—to their lives?More

Maritime 2018: How Do We Value the Oceans (2018): 3–5.

There is nothing American about the quintessentially American Big Mac; its principal ingredients are alien to the western hemisphere. The wheat for its bun was domesticated in what is now Iraq; the cattle that supply its beef and cheese are native to Turkey; its garnishes of lettuce, mustard, pickled cucumber and onion originated in Egypt, India and central Asia. All of these reached the Americas as familiars of the miscellaneous conquistadors and colonists who carried them across the seas in hopes of replicating their homelands in a new world.More

Global Geneva 2019.

According to the ancient Greeks, the earth was encompassed by a world ocean that was the source of all water on earth, salt and fresh, and personified by Oceanus. It is an arresting concept, and one that proved far ahead of its time. Even in the classical era, rationalist writers such as Herodotus began rejecting the idea: “I cannot help laughing at the absurdity of all the map-makers—there are plenty of them—who show Ocean running like a river around a perfectly circular earth.”More