In the two previous books of his trilogy, Seamen’s Missions (1986) and The Way of the Sea (2008), the author researched how the seafarers’ mission movement began and expanded. This third volume traces the captivating human drama surrounding the origins. In fifteen fascinating chapters the book presents, for the first time ever, the embattled life of George Charles Smith—today recognized worldwide as the founder of the Maritime Mission Movement. Here, the reader can follow the turbulent career of this man of extremes: his humble origins; his harrowing years in a “floating hell” in Nelson’s navy; his relentless war with the “Sodom and Gomorrah” of London’s Sailortown; his dogged pursuit of a “Marine Jerusalem”; his survival of heartless debtors’ prisons; his feting throughout America; and his “last watch” in his home port, Penzance, in southwest England. Perhaps the most powerful affirmation of the lasting legacy of George Charles Smith is how also non-Western participants in today’s maritime mission readily discern in him the profile of a prophet.

An Account of the 1824 tract war between the Baptist and Methodist ministers in Penzance, Cornwall: George Charles Smith and John Waterhouse. The controversy is explored through the literature and personalities of the individuals involved and the history of the Baptists in Cornwall. The book argues that the Baptist movement was irrevocably damaged by it. Both the main antagonists were subsequently major pioneer figures in Wesleyan and Seamen's missions.

Shows how the rise of evangelical religion in the navy helped create a new kind of sailor, technologically trained and steeped in a higher set of values. This book examines how, as the nineteenth century progressed, religious piety, especially evangelical piety, was seen in the British navy less as eccentric and marginal and more as an essential ingredient of the character looked for in professional seamen. The book traces the complex interplay between formal religious observance, such as Sunday worship, and pockets of zealous piety, showing how evangelicalism gradually earned less grudging regard, until inthe 1860s and 1870s it became a dominant source of values and a force for moral reform. Religion in the British Navy explains this shift, outlining how Arctic expeditions showed the need for dependability and character, how Health Returns revealed the full extent of sexual licence and demonstrated the urgency of moral reform, and how manning difficulties in the Russian War of 1854-1856 showed that a modern fleet required a new type of sailor, technologically trained and steeped in a higher set of values. The book also discusses how the navy, with its newly awakened religious sensibilities, played a major role in the expansion of Protestant missions globally, in exploration, convict transportation, the expansion of imperial frontiers, and worldwide maritime policing operations. Fervent piety had an effect in all these areas - religion had helped develop a new kind of manliness where piety as well asdaring had a place. RICHARD BLAKE is the author of Evangelicals in the Royal Navy, 1775-1815 (Boydell 2008).

Institutional foundation stories have a tendency to change and develop with the passage of time and much repetition. Maritime social historian R.W.H. Miller here explores the life of The Rev. John Ashley and his association with the foundation storyof the Mission to Seafarers, the work of which society is much admired by its present Patron, HRH the Princess Royal. The traditional story is that Ashley's son, out walking by the Bristol Channel with his father, in the early 1830s, asked how the islanders could go to church. Ashley went to see, and from the islands of Flat Holm and Steep Holm seeing large fleets of wind bound ships, asked himself the same question. He used his own money (deriving mainly from the trade of sugar and slaves) to build a schooner, which he sailed in all weathers to provide an answer, in the process creating for himself a place in the ancestry of several Anglican and Catholic societies, of which the Mission to Seafarers, the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, and the Apostleship of the Sea, continue to provide seafarers with a valued and often heroic service.

This book will long stand as the foundational study of church missions and ministry to men and women of the sea. International in scope, it covers in detail the efforts, particularly during the past two centuries, to serve the spiritual and moral needs of seafarers. The author, himself a former seafarer and seafarers' chaplain, spent more than fifteen years of painstaking research to compile this fascinating and authoritative book.

One Firm Anchor is a fantastic introduction to the history of chaplaincy at sea and what preceded it. Miller argues that the fractious period of the Reformation was pivotal: before, there was no formal ministry and only scattered welfare provision for seafarers; afterwards, chaplains were increasingly found at sea, and seafarers became increasingly the recipients of the modern approach to mission. One Firm Anchor adds substantially to the seminal work of Peter F. Anson and Roald Kverndal. Published to coincide with the 2012 International Conference of the Apostleship of the Sea, this is an important new work for all involved in seafaring as well as maritime historians.