Professor Roger Knight

MA (Dublin) PGCE (Sussex) PhD (London) FRHistS

Visiting Professor of Naval History

I came to Greenwich late in my career, via Tonbridge School, Trinity College, Dublin and University College, London. For twenty-seven years I worked in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, starting in the Manuscripts Department in 1974 and leaving as Deputy Director. Although for much of my time there my work involved contact with the academic community, any research that I managed to complete was in my own time. When I left the Museum in 2000, I started teaching the postgraduate course in the Greenwich Maritime Institute and was appointed Visiting Professor of Naval History. On the completion of my Nelson biography and the start of the Leverhulme project, I was appointed Professor of Naval History.

Research Interests

My doctorate was a study of the Royal Dockyards at the time of the American Revolutionary War and I maintain an interest in the politics and administration of the navy of that period.

Victualling and the Contractor State - In 2005, the University was awarded a substantial grant by The Leverhulme Trust to support a study of victualling the Royal Navy during the Great Wars with France, entitled �Sustaining the Empire: War, the Navy and the Contractor State, 1793-1815�. The central focus of the project is the relationship of the private sector with government. In partnership with the National Maritime Museum, the Greenwich Maritime Institute hosts the project, involving myself, a postdoctoral fellow and a research assistant working towards a Ph.D. The project was begun in May 2006 and a workshop and conference papers have followed, and research for a jointly-authored monograph is proceeding. Much of the data produced by the project will made publicly available in electronic format via the website of the National Maritime Museum.
The British Government and the Napoleonic Wars - After publication of the victualling book, I plan to extend my area of study into a general study of the British government at war with Napoleon. I am already some way into negotiations with a publisher about this project.

Select Publications

The Pursuit of Victory: the life and achievement of Horatio Nelson (Allen Lane, Penguin, 2005)

�Devil Bolts and Deception? Wartime naval shipbuilding in private shipyards, 1739-1815�, Journal of Maritime Research (electronic journal), April 2003

�From Impressment to Task Work: strikes and disruption in the royal dockyards, 1688-1788� in K. Lunn and A. Day (eds.), History of Work and Labour Relations in the Royal Dockyards (Mansell, 1999)

�The Royal Navy�s recovery after the early phase of the American Revolutionary War� in G. Andreopolis and H. Selesky (eds.) The Aftermath of Defeat: societies, armed forces and the challenge of recovery (Yale University Press, 1994)

With J. Hattendorf, A. Pearsall, N. Rodger, G. Till (eds.), British Naval Documents, 1204-1960 (Navy Records Society, 131, 1993)

�The First Fleet: its state and preparation� in J.Hardy and A.Frost (eds.), Studies from Terra Australis to Australia (Australian Academy of the Humanities, Canberra, 1989)

Portsmouth Dockyard Papers, 1774-1783: the American War (Portsmouth Records Series, City of Portsmouth, 1987)

�New England Forests and British Sea power: Albion Revised�, American Neptune, 1986, XLVI

�The building and maintenance of the British Fleet during the Anglo-French Wars, 1688-1815� in M. Acerra, J. Merino and J. Meyer(eds.), Les Marines de Guerre Européenes XVII-XVIII siècles (Presses de l�Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1985)

With Alan Frost, The Journal of Daniel Paine, 1794-1797 (Library of Australian History, Sydney, 1983)

Guide to the Manuscripts in the National Maritime Museum (ed.) (Mansell, 1977, 1980)

�The introduction of copper sheathing into the Royal Navy, 1779-1786�, Mariner�s Mirror, 1973, 59, 299-308

�Sandwich, Middleton and dockyard appointments� Mariner�s Mirror, 1971

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Professor Roger Knight