| A. THE CARIBBEAN & CENTRAL AMERICA |
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| 1. Cuba Libre,or not so Free,yet? |
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It is impossible to have anything other than profound sympathy for the Cuban people who have endured throughout their history, oppression, incompetence, and generous helping of personal dishonesty from their rulers. It all began with the steely Jesuitical zeal of the Spaniards, later interference and investment by the US, open embracing of the Mafia with all its evil and immoral practices, to a prolonged and ultimately unhealthy dose of Marxist-Leninism! But a brighter future dawns, at long, long last, surely?
* This generic title can be divided to suit the vessel's itinerary into:
A) Cuba the Mafia Years
B) Havana Portrait of an Exotic and Romantic City
C) The Cuban Missile Crisis - Thirteen Days in October 1962
D) The Young Guns - Fidel, Raul and Che Taking Beautiful Cuba Sharply Left! |
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| 2.The Story of the Suez Canal - Ferdinand de Lesseps. Hubris |
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| The history of the construction of the Suez Canal begins with the Pharaohs and King Darius of Persia. All made sporting shots at crossing the desert by boat, with mixed results. Ringmaster de Lesseps pulled the money and the skills together. The canal opened in triumph and to great acclaim in 1869 creating the first salt water passage between the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Within 5 years it was grossing receipts of £1,000,000 per annum in the money of the day. Oh that it had stayed so simple! |
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| 3. The Impossible Dream - Building the Panama Canal. Ferdinand de Lesseps. Nemesis. |
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From a French lead disaster to a Machiavellian U.S. triumph at a cost of nearly 30,000 lives and billions of francs and dollars. The detail in between reads like a thriller.
*This presentation can be divided neatly into three as required:
A) The French Project,
B) The U.S. Project, and,
C) Subject to the captain and pilot’s permission, A view from the bridge a commentary during transit. |
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| 4. Panama - The Nation Built on Wall St. |
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| The story of Panama often goes unheeded. People tend to think only of the canal. Yet the tale of the country itself is no less exciting. Sir Francis Drake, Sir Henry Morgan and others trying to steal the gold from the Conquistadores . Spanish suppression. Cynical liberation by the USA in order to build 'their' canal. Democracy of a sort, a full scale US military invasion - another just cause? The consummately evil General Noriega and the background to those 'Panama Papers'. Masses to consider. |
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| 5. Castila del Oro - Central America, an Overview |
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| The isthmus connecting North / South America is too often overlooked. Ancient Aztec, Mayan and Inca influences, not to mention a hefty dose of Iberian colonialism and more than a whiff of Inquisition. Revolution and rebellion. Re-organisation and war. The struggle for recognition and independence. The story to date and its relationship, not always easy with Uncle Sam. |
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B. THE WEST INDIES |
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| 6. The Story of the West Indies. Columbus to Freedom, A Rocky Road. |
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| At breakfast time on 12th October 1492 (old calendar) all was tranquil and idyllic on these paradise islands we have come to know and love as the West Indies. By teatime Columbus had set in train a tidal wave of European exploitation, then settlement and violent colonial rivalry over these 'treasures' of the gorgeous Caribbean. Their legacy when they departed does not leave us with a great deal of which to be proud. |
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| 7. The Masters of the Transatlantic Slave Trade - The Shipowners Point of View. |
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| Cut through the remorse, self- recrimination and hypocrisy and examine the ships and the men who ran the Liverpool trade in its heyday and set their conduct in the context of the times. |
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| 8. The Real Pirates of the Caribbean |
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| A gentle meander through the islands. Charles V of Spain, Cortes and the Conquistadores. All the boys in the band. Privateers and Buccaneers and the real pirates? Sovereign governments. Violent rivalry, slavery, sugar, tobacco, hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. It’s all here. (This talk is tailored to the ship’s itinerary). |
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| 9. Sugar! Sugar! The English Sugar Barons of the West Indies - The not so sweet tale of Britain's involvement and prominence in this commodity |
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| Reprise the 'Merchant Kings of Empire' relying on European indentured labour, then West African slaves and how a handful of families created wealth almost beyond calculation. Meet William Beckford, 'Alderman Sugarcane', three times an MP and twice Lord Mayor of London. The richest commoner in England by far. His thousands of acres of plantations on Jamaica did not tend themselves. A snapshot of the roaring success of 18th century British trade, and subsequent Victorian hypocrisy, but at what cost? Certainly none to their consciences. |
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| 10. Jamaica the Story of a Troubled Island |
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| Second or perhaps third prize in Oliver Cromwell's 'Western Design' the 17th century invasion force that limped ashore to dispossess the Spaniards had no idea that they had found the most valuable island in what became the British West lndies, as priceless as India would become in its turn. But thereafter and to the present, oh dear! |
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C. THE ATLANTIC & THE BRITISH ISLES |
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"Whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world and consequently the world itself".
Sir Walter Raleigh.
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| 11. The Mighty North Atlantic - In all, thirty-three million square miles of ocean. |
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| A living thing, complex and multi-dimensional, forever roaring, boiling, crashing and swelling. Lapping gently, if you are lucky and always pondering and powerful! Crucial to our human story. We have lived around its edges, crossed and recrossed it, fought on it, plundered it and polluted it. Yet it proudly defies us all, both a barrier and a bridge to the New World. |
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| 12. The Atlantic Railway. Brunel's Vision. |
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| "Man might as well project a voyage to the Moon, as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean". O. Lardner, scientific writer 1838. But he had not met Isambard Kingdom Brunel whose vision it was to buy a ticket at Paddington Station in London and disembark in Boston or New York. So began a century of courageous design and shipbuilding in what became a magnificent procession of ever bolder and grander ocean liners to traverse that massive opponent, the Atlantic, in pursuit of that elusive Blue Riband. |
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| 13. 'This Precious Stone Set in the Silver Sea' |
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| An account of the ocean and seas that surround the UK, and which together allowed a small insignificant island nation to rise and become first, a major European power, and then a majestic imperial force. |
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| 14. The Stately Homes of England and the Stately Bankers Too. |
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| The legacies of British slave-ownership. When the slave traders were forced out of their odious business they were handsomely recompensed by the UK government, but meagre fare set against the compensation the slave owners were to receive 25 or so years later. In today's values approximately £18 billion. Some of course were traders and owners, thus able to double dip! Where did it all go? And the slaves? They got nothing and even a very dubious form of freedom to begin with. |
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| 15. The Union of England, Wales, Scotland & Ireland. |
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| A lively marriage, sometimes a tempestuous one! This presentation explores the long and deep background to today's patriotic, loyalist, separatist and independence movements. |
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| 15. A Short Biography of the English Channel,"Or why we are why we are!". |
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| Beginning with how and when the Channel was formed and how it began to mould the British as an idiosyncratic and island race. Many welcome and helpfully influential visitors from the European side. Some less so and with distinctly less helpful plans! The beguilingly narrow stretch of water that has proved an ally and saviour, at times when the nation might not have been able to defend itself. |
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| 17. 'Auld Reekie', The Story of Edinburgh. |
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| The fourth or possibly the fifth site for the capital of Scotland. From 1437 Edinburgh and its citizens rose to play a critical role not only in Scottish and British history via the Reformation and the Enlightenment for example, but also on a global scale from the unfortunate Darien Scheme onwards in literature, science, philosophy, medicine, engineering, economics and on and on! |
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| 18. England and Ireland, 800 Years of a Not Always Harmonious Relationship |
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| From the moment that the Norman-English took an interest in 1169, trouble was sure to follow, and it did. |
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| 19. Brian Boru - High King of All Ireland. Fact or Fiction? |
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| Very much fact. Yet his heroics and self-sacrifice in ridding Ireland of the Vikings, at the battle of Clontarf in 1014, would simply pave the way for another group of unwelcome guests to arrive from across the Irish Sea. |
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| 20. 'To Hell or Connacht', Cromwell in Ireland 1649 to 1650 |
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| Still a reviled name in many quarters today, but were his brutal actions simply in step with those violent times? Mitigation is hard to find. |
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| 21. James II v William III. The Stuart's Struggle for the Crown in Ireland |
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| The 'Glorious Revolution' was anything but in Ireland leading to the two monarchs and their armies fighting it out on the banks of the Boyne. The end of catholic monarchy in the British Isles. |
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| 22. The Easter Rising - Dublin 24th April 1916. |
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| A courageous yet quixotic step in the needlessly long and harrowing road to Irish independence. |
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| 23. Irish Myths & Legends. A Miscellany |
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| Why shouldn't history be embroidered with a little imagination? Ancient and symbolic kings and queens. St Patrick and those snakes, four leafed clover and all those leprechauns and other 'little people'. |
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| 24. 'The '15 and the '45.' |
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| The final throw of the dice for the francophiles James Edward Stuart and his son Bonnie Prince Charlie, respectively the Old Pretender and the Young Pretender who calculated that by invading England via Scotland they could wrest the crown back from the Hanoverians. They came close, much closer than they them selves thought. |
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| 25. Liverpool, Slavery, Sugar and Cotton. The Birth of a Great Port |
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| When King John left the muddy shores of the Mersey to inspect his Irish inheritance - hastily granting Liverpool its first royal charter en route - little did he know what he had started. The slave and cotton billions were still five hundred years and more into the future. |
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| 26. King Cotton |
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| Not merely a Lancastrian success, but a huge contributor to the British economy, the Empire and world trade. Were those mills as dark and satanic as portrayed? No not always. Hear the mill owners case. |
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| 27. The Cotton Famine and the Blockade Runners of the US Civil War |
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| Quickly after the outbreak of war 400,000 plus cotton workers in the north of England were put out of work and began to starve and die. The real life captain Rhett Butler and colleagues attempt a gallant rescue! |
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D. SOUTH AMERICA |
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| 28. Simon Bolivar - Liberator & The Birth of Modern South America. |
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| Born in Caracas, rich spoiled and wayward. No early clues from his youth that Bolivar would rise, utterly fearlessly, to become the 'greatest South American'. When creaking Spain imposed direct and crushing rule from Madrid on her South American colonies, hundreds of thousands yearned for their freedom. Simon Bolivar delivered it to millions helping to create en route, Greater Colombia. Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela and of course, Bolivia. Exalted and venerated for a while, he died reviled, misunderstood and penniless, but the Spaniards never returned! |
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| 29. Brazil - A Giant Still in the Making. |
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| As Spanish and Portuguese explorers discovered more and more of the outline of South America they appealed to the Holy Father to resolve their competing territorial claims. By the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, Portugal got what we now call Brazil and Spain got nearly all the rest! But, not a bad deal over the span of history. Brazil occupies 47% of the land area of South America. The Amazon basin is still home to a vast tropical forest, diverse wildlife and ecological systems, and rich ethnic antiquity. Much still to discover and understand. Brazil is truly a 'megadiverse' country, but one of the last to abandon slavery. All the natural bounty of this beautiful land has brought neither the harmony or economic 'El Dorado' its people deserve. |
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| 30. Round the Horn. |
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| This presentation completes the South American trilogy. South from Brazil, this piece looks at little known Uruguay and Paraguay, over known Argentina, via Tierra Del Fuego and up the Pacific coast, to Chile and again Peru. As Spanish colonial rule weakens and decays, so rival powers seek to intervene, interfere and 'liberate' these countries. From the intrepid Magellan and co via the dauntless and extraordinary Admiral Lord Cochrane, a troubled past gives way to a slightly more stable present, but still the outsiders intermeddle in the name of 'investment' eg the recent Chinese purchase of an entire mountain in Peru to secure its own future supply of copper. |
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E. END OF EMPIRE & GENERAL INTEREST |
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| 31. Driving "Miss Daisy" and the Story of Racing Bentley Motors |
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| From timeless chauffeuring in an immensely powerful Bentley Continental and returning to the famous racing marque of 1920’s- once infamously dismissed as being “merely the fastest lorries in the world.” Shame on you Signor Bugatti, shame on you! |
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| 32. The End of the Empire. Or - Do we owe the world an apology? |
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Origins, ups and downs, then plenty of ups. Exploitation and globalization. At one point holding sway over about 458 million people, a quarter of the world's population and 13 million square miles of the globe. A view of its rise - so we cannot carry on trade without war, nor war without trade, to decolonisation and decline. Legacy? Immense, take pride in it.
This massive topic conveniently divides into a two part presentation. |
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| 33. The View from my Sitting Room Window. Queen Victoria at Osborne House, Isle of Wight. |
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| The final months of her life reflecting upon her beloved Albert and not so beloved children! In tranquil surroundings enjoying the magnificent view across the broad sweep of her gardens to the Solent. Could she have ever imagined the Empire over which she presided, but never visited, would ever end? |
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| 34. The California Gold Rush. The Original San Francisco '49ers'. |
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| Prospectors, speculators, blackguards, claim-jumpers and straightforward murderers. All 300,000 of them! The hopeful and the damned came from all parts of the world. A decade that transformed the west coast of the USA forever and join up the continental union for the first time and so very nearly tipped the United States into the bloodbath of its civil war fifteen years early. |
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