Hubbard’s book presents a new and richly researched perspective on the social history of English seafarers at a crucial moment in the development of England’s maritime empire. Drawing principally on state papers, printed sources, and the detailed depositions preserved in the records of the High Court of Admiralty, Hubbard explores the experience of life at sea and the role that mariners played in the development of imperial and commercial networks across the three decades on either side of 1600. As well as presenting many fascinating vignettes of early modern life—a style that characterizes Hubbard’s other work—Englishmen at Sea represents a welcome reinterpretation of ideas about national identity within the maritime sphere.
The first two chapters outline the chronology of maritime employment around the turn of the seventeenth century, when decades of warfare in the late sixteenth century, during which violent plunder was economically vital to seafarers, gave way to...