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Treasures from the map room : A journey through the Bodleian collections /Debbie Hall. "This book explores the stories behind seventy-five extraordinary maps. It includes unique treasures such as the fourteenth-century Gough Map of Great Britain, exquisite portolan charts made in the fifteenth century, the Selden Map of China - the earliest example of Chinese merchant cartography - and an early world map from the medieval Islamic Book of Curiosities, together with more recent examples of fictional places drawn in the twentieth century, such as C.S. Lewis's own map of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien's map of Middle Earth. As well as the works of famous mapmakers Mercator, Ortelius, Blaeu, Saxton and Speed, the book also includes lesser known but historically significant works: early maps of the Moon, of the transit of Venus, hand-drawn estate plans and early European maps of the New World. There are also some surprising examples: escape maps printed on silk and carried by pilots in the Second World War in case of capture on enemy territory; the first geological survey of the British Isles showing what lies beneath our feet; a sixteenth-century woven tapestry map of Worcestershire; a map plotting outbreaks of cholera and a jigsaw map of India from the 1850s. Behind each of these lies a story, of intrepid surveyors, ambitious navigators, chance finds or military victories. Drawing on the unique collection in the Bodleian Library, these stunning maps range from single cities to the solar system, span the thirteenth to the twenty-first century and cover most of the world."--Provided by the publisher. 2016 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 528.9
Exploration of the South Seas in the eighteenth century : rediscovered accounts /Sandhya Patel. "The first volume makes available Samuel Wallis' logs of the Dolphin's voyage 1766-68 in their original form for the first time. Captain Samuel Wallis was the first Englishman to come across the Tuamotus and the Society Isles in the South Pacific, specifically Tahiti. His writings predate the available textual sources by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, the log of the Spanish voyages and James Cook - whose text Wallis' prefigures. The three logs attest to the very first encounter between Europeans and Tahitians, but until now comparatively little research has been conducted on the more elaborate second volume and none on the first. The Polynesian archipelagos grew into objects of discourse over the years and Wallis' logs may very well be located at the heart of these evocative constructs. The translated accounts of voyages undertaken by foreign vessels abounded in an era when they encouraged not only competitive geopolitical initiatives but also commercial enterprises throughout Europe, resulting in a voluminous textual corpus. However, French merchant-seaman Etienne Marchand's journal of his voyage round the world in 1790-1792, encompassing an important visit to the Marquesas Archipelago during his first crossing of the Pacific, remained unpublished until 2005 and has only now been made available in English. The second volume of this series comprises an annotated translation in English of this document."--Provided by the publisher. 2016. • BOOK • 2 copies available. 910.4(100)
Dover in the great war. "Situated on the south coast of England, geographically and strategically, Dover more than played its part in the First World War. It was from its harbour that the many vessels of the Dover Patrol set about preventing German ships from using the English Channel. It was undoubtedly one of the most important Royal Naval units that Britain had during the First World War. Because of its important defensive roll, Dover was identified as a legitimate and relevant target by the German authorities. As a result, German Zeppelin's and Gotha aircraft subjected Dover to 113 aerial attacks, dropping 185 bombs in the process. The first of these raids took place on Christmas Eve, 1914; this was also the first time a German bomb had been dropped on British soil. The last raid was on 24 August 1918, in which twenty adults and three children were killed. The local residents who, for whatever reason, were unable to enlist in the military during the war, but who still felt the desire and obligation to serve their King and country, were able to do so in organisations such as the Dover Volunteer Training Corps. Most towns had similar units, and their members carried out some sterling work on the Home Front. By the end of the war, Dover and its people had sustained through testing and difficult times. Like every community throughout the nation, they had paid a heavy price. They had been as close to the war as it was possible to be, without actually being on the Front Line. Ships had sailed from its harbour to engage the enemy, and wounded soldiers had returned to the same harbour. Its men had gone of to fight in the war and, sadly, 721 of them never came back."--Provided by the publisher. 2017. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 914.223
The naval war in the Baltic 1939-1945 / Poul Grooss. "From the shelling of the fort at Westerplatte, on the Polish coast, on 1 September 1939, to the loss of thousands of German refugees at sea in May 1945, the Baltic witnessed continuous and ferocious fighting throughout the Second World War. In this new book, the author chronicles the naval warfare and merges such major events as the Siege of Leningrad, the Soviet campaign against Sweden in 1942, the three wars in Finland 1939-44, the Soviet liberation of the Baltic states, the German evacuation of two million people from the East, and the Soviet race westwards in 1945. There are also included fascinating insights into, until now, poorly understood topics such as Swedish co-operation with Germany, the use of the Baltic by the Germans to train U-boats crews for the Battle of the Atlantic, the secret weapons trials in the remote area of Peenemunde, and the RAF mining campaign that did much to reduce the threat of new and revolutionary German submarine technology. Furthermore, the author explains how messages from Bletchley Park were the basis for the RAF attacks on German coastal regions. The political and military backgrounds of the war in this theatre are explained while the details of ships, radar, artillery, mines and aircraft are all covered. This is a superbly researched work which shows how the naval war in the Baltic shaped the Second World War in ways that have not been fully understood. It is a major contribution to the naval history of this era."--Provided by the publisher. 2017 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.545(261.3)