Hi, buddy. Welcome to Dan Snow's history. As you all know, Britain is the greatest maritime

nation on planet Earth about this. There can be no debate. And it is also impossible tonight

that I love talking about that history on this little podcast of mine. And today we're

going to take a luxuriant cruise through British maritime history because I've got Tom

Nankalus on the podcast. He's a building conservationist. He's a writer. He is of Cornish

ancestry. And he's written a beautiful book that attracts a lot of attention here a year

to ago called The Ship Assunder. He looked at 11 relics that together tell the story of

Britain and the sea. We met at the Chalk Valley History Festival last year so you can hear

this alive conversation. Some of you were there in the flesh listening to this wonderful

scholar talking about some pieces of ships, these tiny fragments that act as a lens and

allow us to see the wider ship and the piece of history that they represent. From objects

carried by the sailors to pieces of mast to bits of ships hulls incorporated in other

buildings, these are the traces that our maritime history has left behind. And me and Tom,

we investigate those traces. We're on the case. You can love it. Enjoy.

Tom, do you write as a historian, a lover of the sea with experience of it? Are you

a sailor yourself? No, actually, I write as a total land lover. That's the perspective

I wanted to bring because no one in Britain is very far from the sea. Look at your family

histories. I myself have a couple of seafarers. Most people do, really. So I wanted to celebrate

the romance that we all feel about. The glorious past that you mentioned just there.

And some, I don't know if I can find episodes as well, of course. But what is interesting

for me and you bring us out in your book is how central the sea was in our public life

until very recently, you got the Liverpool Manchester Railway in 1830. That's where you

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