In the first major examination of the diverse European efforts to colonize the Delaware Valley, Mark L. Thompson offers a bold new interpretation of ethnic and national identities in colonial America. For most of the seventeenth century, the lower Delaware Valley remained a marginal area under no state's complete control. English, Dutch, and Swedish colonizers all staked claims to the territory, but none could exclude their rivals for long―in part because Native Americans in the region encouraged the competition. Officials and settlers alike struggled to determine which European nation would possess the territory and what liberties settlers would keep after their own colonies had surrendered.The resulting struggle for power resonated on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. While the rivalry promoted patriots who trumpeted loyalties to their sovereigns and nations, it also rewarded cosmopolitans who struck deals across imperial, colonial, and ethnic boundaries. Just as often it produced men―such as Henry Hudson, Willem Usselincx, Peter Minuit, and William Penn―who did both.Ultimately, The Contest for the Delaware Valley shows how colonists, officials, and Native Americans acted and reacted in inventive, surprising ways. Thompson demonstrates that even as colonial spokesmen debated claims and asserted fixed national identities, their allegiances―along with the settlers'―often shifted and changed. Yet colonial competition imposed limits on this fluidity, forcing officials and settlers to choose a side. Offering their allegiances in return for security and freedom, colonial subjects turned loyalty into liberty.

The Contest for the Delaware Valley: Allegiance, Identity, and Empire in the Seventeenth Century

History

THOMPSON, MARK L.

Americas

LSU Press

Steamboats & sailors of the Great Lakes (Great Lakes books)

Engineering & Transportation

Transportation

Wayne State University Press

<p>In this firsthand account of life aboard the ships of the Great Lakes, Mark Thompson weaves together the threads of a story that relives a centuries-old tradition. Thompson began his logbook after he reported for duty aboard the Calcite II at Fraser Shipyard in Superior, Wisconsin, for the 1996 shipping season. A Sailor's Logbook is the first such book to chronicle a sailor's life at the end of the twentieth century. Not just a detailing of weather, cargo, and crew relations, A Sailor's Logbook is also an account of the daily lives of a diverse group of crewmembers as they share their sailing knowledge, "sea stories," and the many memories that accompany the pictures. Although there are ample resources in museums, archival collections, and company files regarding statistical logbook information, A Sailor's Logbook details the intricacies of daily life on a Great Lakes freighter. Thompson navigates the reader through the waters of the Great Lakes and his own life in this very special narrative.</p>

A Sailor's Logbook: A Season Aboard Great Lakes Freighters (Great Lakes Books)

Reference

For the first time, a historian and seasoned mariner looks beyond the specific circumstances of individual shipwrecks in an effort to reach a clearer understanding of the economic, political, and psychological factors that have influenced the 25,000 wrecks on the Great Lakes over the past 300 years. Looking at the entire tragic history of shipwrecks on North America's expansive inland seas, from the 1679 loss of the Griffon to the mysterious sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975, Mark L. Thompson concludes that a wreck is not an isolated event. In Graveyard of the Lakes, Thompson suggests that most of the accidents and deaths on the lakes have been the result of human error, ranging from simple mistakes to gross incompetence. In addition to his compelling analysis of the causes of shipwrecks, Thompson includes factual accounts of more than one hundred wrecks. Graveyard of the Lakes will forever change the reader's perspective on shipwrecks.

Graveyard of the Lakes (Great Lakes Books)

The Great Lakes shipping industry can trace its lineage to 1679 with the launching on Lake Erie of the Griffon, a sixty-foot galley weighing nearly fifty tons. Built by LaSalle, a French explorer who had been commissioned to search for a passage through North America to China, it was the first sailing ship to operate on the upper lakes, signaling the dawn of the Great Lakes shipping industry as we know it today.Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakes is the most thorough and factual study of the Great Lakes shipping industry written this century. Author Mark L. Thompson tells the fascinating story of the world's most efficient bulk transportation system, describing the Great Lakes freighters, the cargoes of the great ships ,and the men and women who have served as crew. He documents the dramatic changes that have taken places in the industry and looks at the critical role that Great Lakes shipping plays in the economic well-being of the U.S. and Canada, despite the fact tat the size of the fleet and the amount of cargo carried have declined dramatically in recent years.Spanning more than three centuries, from LaSalle's voyage in 1679, through 1975 with the mysterious sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, to life aboard today's thousand-foot behemoths, this important volume documents the evolution of the industry through its "Golden Age" at the end of the nineteenth century to the present, with a downsized U.S. fleet that numbers fewer than seventy vessels.

Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakes (Great Lakes Books)

This book is an account of the ships that have borne the name "Queen of the Lakes," an honorary title indicating that, at the time of its launching, a ship is the longest on the Great Lakes. In one of the most comprehensive books ever written on the maritime history of the lakes, Mark L. Thompson presents a vignette of each of the dozens of ships that have held the title, chronicling the dates the ship sailed, its dimensions, the derivation of its name, its role in the economic development of the region, and its sailing history. Through the stories of the individual ships, Thompson also describes the growth of ship design on the Great Lakes and the changing nature of the shipping industry on the lakes. The launching of the first ship on Lake Ontario in 1678 - the diminutive Frontenac, a small, two-masted vessel of only about ten tons and no more than forty or forty-five feet long - set in motion an evolutionary process that has continued for more than three hundred years. That ship is the direct ancestor of all the ships that ever have operated on the Great Lakes, from the Str. Onoko, launched in 1882 and the first ship to bear the name Queen of the Lakes; to the Str. W. D. Rees, which held its title for only a few weeks, to today's Queen, the Tregurtha, the longest ship on the lakes since its launching in 1981.Although ships on the Great Lakes may be surpassed in size and efficiency by many of the modern ocean freighters, Thompson notes that the ships now sailing on the great freshwater seas of North America have achieved a level of operating mastery that is unrivaled anywhere else in the world, considering the inherent limitations of the Great Lakes system. The Tregurtha reigns as a model of unsurpassed maritime craftsmanship and as heir to a long and glorious tradition of excellence. Every magnificent ship that has borne the title in the past has contributed in some part to the greatness embodied in the Tregurtha. In time, her title as Queen of the Lakes will pass to another monumental freighter that will carry the art and science of shipbuilding and operation to even greater heights.

Queen of the Lakes (Great Lakes Books)

World

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