Maritime Animals

A thoughtful, global maritime history that centers non-human animals.

This volume explores nonhuman animals’ involvement with human maritime activities in the age of sail—as well as the myriad multispecies connections formed across different geographical locations knitted together by the long history of global ship movement.

Far from treating the ship as a confined space defined by the sea, Maritime Animals considers the ship’s connections to broader contexts and networks and covers a variety of locations, from the Canadian Arctic to the Pacific Islands. Each chapter focuses on the oceanic experiences of a particular species, from ship vermin, animals transported onboard as food, and animal specimens for scientific study to livestock, companion and working animals, deep-sea animals that find refuge in shipwrecks, and terrestrial animals that hunker down on flotsam and jetsam. Drawing on recent scholarship in animal studies, maritime studies, environmental humanities, and a wide range of other perspectives and storytelling approaches, Maritime Animals challenges an anthropocentric understanding of maritime history. Instead, this volume highlights the ways in which species, through their interaction with the oceans, tell stories and make histories in significant and often surprising ways.

In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include Anna Boswell, Nancy Cushing, Lea Edgar, David Haworth, Donna Landry, Derek Lee Nelson, Jimmy Packham, Laurence Publicover, Killian Quigley, Lynette Russell, Adam Sundberg, and Thom van Dooren.

Highlights the ways in which species, through their interaction with the oceans, tell stories and make histories in significant and often surprising ways.

Maritime Animals challenges an anthropocentric understanding of maritime history.

Chapters focus on specific species, such as the Galapagos Tortoise, tuatara lizard, Inuit sled dogs, horses, pigs, rats, sponges, and Hawaiian snails.

Features contributions from scholars in animal studies, maritime studies, and environmental humanities.

Kaori Nagai is Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Kent. She is the author of Empire of Analogies: Kipling, India and Ireland and Imperial Beast Fables: Animals, Cosmopolitanism, and the British Empire.

Kaori Nagai is Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Kent. She is the author of Empire of Analogies: Kipling, India and Ireland and Imperial Beast Fables: Animals, Cosmopolitanism, and the British Empire.