The 19th-century maritime superstitions that were believed to protect men at sea

By Karl Bell, Reader in Cultural History, University of Portsmouth

Maritime folklore has long been shuffled to the margins of nautical history, presented as the quaint, colourful oddities of a former age. Yet this body of beliefs, practices and stories can offer important insights into how seafarers of the 19th century viewed and understood their working environment.

Beneath the dominant histories of European exploration, heroic naval battles and imperial claims to mastery of the seas, there was the daily reality of working, living and, not uncommonly, dying in a dangerous…

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