Recent Posts
- Fathoming the Oceans Through History – TEDx Talk (7/18/2023) - Photo by Katherine TaylorMany people assume that more and better science alone holds the key to solving ocean challenges related to climate change, but it may surprise you to learn that protecting oceans depends on ocean history. Understanding, or “fathoming” the interrelationships between people and oceans involves as much attention to imagination as to modern science. Helen Rozwadowski’s… Continue Reading
- An Appreciation of John Gillis (1/20/2021) - John Gills at the Fluid Frontiers Workshop, held in October 2011 at the Island Institute in Rockland, Maine Today John Gillis and his wife, Christina Gillis, should (pandemic shipping permitting!) receive a booklet of appreciation for John and his lifetime of work as a historian. A number of scholars have come together over the past… Continue Reading
- Ocean History and Confederate Legacies (6/17/2020) - Graffiti on the statue of Matthew Fontaine Maury on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. Photo credit: Adam H. DombyDr. Penelope Hardy, a historian of science and technology who studies technologies of science, ocean science, and ocean exploration, has co-authored with me a piece on Matthew Fontaine Maury exploring links between his accomplishments, including his science,… Continue Reading
- Recreational Origins of Commercial Fishing Technology (11/6/2019) - As someone long interested in the histories of fisheries science and of nineteenth-century scientific study of the ocean, I eagerly picked up a recent scholarly article by fisheries scientist and maritime historian Trevor John Kenchington on the introduction of the otter trawl, a technology that has contributed significantly to industrial-scale exploitation of fish populations around… Continue Reading
- Imagining the Undersea (7/30/2019) - Most people who gaze out over the ocean focus on its surface, whether glassy, foamy, or stormy. There are people today – and in the past – who when looking seaward did so with acute consciousness of its third dimension, either of the sea floor or of the volumetric waters themselves. In my book, Fathoming… Continue Reading
- Welcome to Fathoming the Ocean (2/23/2019) - Welcome to Fathoming the Ocean, a blog and website dedicated to fostering and promoting ocean history. I’m Helen Rozwadowski, a historian who has dedicated a career to exploring our human relationship with the ocean – all of it, including its great depths as well as its surface and coasts. Because of the importance of the ocean… Continue Reading