First, the second book, A Boston Schooner in the Royal Navy, is under review by a publisher; that process started early January. How long it lasts is impossible to predict. It’s a waiting game. If you’ve supported the project, just know that I will do my very best by the book, and when I have some good news, I’ll post it here as soon as I can.
Meanwhile, I’ve committed to contribute articles to two journals this year. Both are group efforts; I was kindly invited by the researchers on the Global Sea Routes Database Project, based at the University of Trieste, to contribute to their takeover of an upcoming issue of Itinerario; and the second is a roundtable in the International Journal of Maritime History, an outgrowth of the Risk and Uncertainty in the Premodern World seminar series, hosted by the Institute for Historical Research, School of Advanced Studies, University of London, in which I presented in late 2021.
I also have an article, co-authored with Nick Burningham, coming out in the Mariner’s Mirror sometime this year, on the likely origins of the two-masted square rig in British Atlantic shipping. When we have a date, I’ll post it.
I have committed to joining a long-term research project on maritime commercial connections between the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, contingent upon funding from the European Research Council; that application will be submitted by the end of this month. By 15 April, I will have applied for an NEH Fellowship for a book project on the maritime history of colonial North Carolina–for the second time; those applications have about a 7% success rate, which is a sad state of affairs, but the success rate for non-applicants is 0%. More funding for humanities research!
Right now, I’m working on the log of an American snow from 1805–6, procured for me by Prof. Guido Abbatista, principal investigator of the GSR Database Project. Initially, I intended merely to transcribe the log and plot the voyages in GSR, but the more I read, the more I realized that this is a rich source that asks some interesting questions; I have finished the transcription and I’m now deep into researching some of those, from Pennsylvania to Ireland to the Caribbean, and there is certainly a good article to be written from this. Stay tuned on that.
Finally, I’m looking forward to the 2022 North American Society for Oceanic History annual conference, to be held right here in Wilmington, hosted by Cape Fear Community College, where I taught as an adjunct from 2001 to 2011. I was the first to submit my abstract to present, so I’m told, and I’ll be helping out any way I can with the conference. That’s 22-25 June.
All for now–if you read this, thank you!
PHILLIP REID 