Sea Travelling

Thinking Allowed

BBC

Science, Society & Culture

4.4 • 973 Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Laurie Taylor talks to Helen Sampson, Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, about her voyage into the lives and work of seafarers. 25 years of fieldwork on merchant cargo ships has given her an unusual insight into the changing realities of life onboard and the gap between romantic notions of sea travel and the harsher realities - from isolation from friends and family to the monotony of daily life, increasing regulation and surveillance. Also, Sara Caputo, Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, illuminates the way in which the history of mapping the oceans reflects the creation of the modern world as we know it, via centuries of trading, exploring and conquering.

Producer: Jayne Egerton

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before you listen to this BBC podcast I'd like to tell you why I love
0:03.7	podcasting. I'm Natasha Aronson I'm an assistant commissioner for the BBC and I work on
0:09.4	making podcasts my real passion is discovering unbelievable unheard stories and working with the biggest
0:16.9	stars who can really bring those stories to life.
0:20.1	I love the whole process of making podcasts from the spark of an idea to hearing the final edit.
0:26.4	There's nothing like it. What makes BBC Podcast special is that we're working for you.
0:31.0	So whatever we commission has to reflect the things that you care about and love wherever you are in the
0:36.0	UK. So if you like this BBC podcast, there's so much more to discover. Have a listen on BBC Sounds.
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0:47.0	This is a Thinking Loud Podcasts from the BBC and for more details and much, much more about thinking aloud go to our
0:54.8	website at BBC.co. UK.
0:58.4	Hello I've got a frightening childhood memory of being lost at sea not in the mid-Atlantic or the South Pacific, but in
1:06.0	the temperate waters off the coast of Port Erin in the Isle of Man.
1:10.3	Although I was only 14 at the time, my parents thought I was old enough to handle a rowing boat and with the help of a metal spinner go out to see in search of mackerel.
1:20.0	Well all went well initially but I became so enthused by what I was catching
1:24.4	that I allowed myself to go further and further from the shore.
1:28.0	Only then did I realize I'd lost my bearings, which was the way back.
1:32.0	There was no clue to be found in the surrounding sea, no
1:35.3	signposts. It was only when I sighted a remembered hill that I finally found my way
1:40.6	back home. Well that ancient memory came rushing back to consciousness
1:45.0	as I read of an extraordinary account of the times when my dilemma was
1:49.5	routinely encountered by seafarers who without any navigational ideas attempted to find directions
	...

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