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Who Should We Rescue? The Morals of Maritime Emergency

47 min • 12 augusti 2025

This episode explores a subject of great contemporary interest and significance: the morals of behaviour at sea. What are the origins of the idea of a captain going down with his ship? When did it become expected to save anyone from shipwreck - regardless of their nationality, religion or status? Are we living in a world where the expected moral norms of seafaring are now changing? To find out more Dr Sam Willis travelled to the Center for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin to meet three historians who have been working on this project for several years and have published a hugely interesting and important book: Moral Seascapes: On the Ethics and Aesthetics of Maritime Emergency. They explore some of the great maritime artists including Turner and Gericault; epoch-defining lifesaving technology; contemporary images of migration disaster and raise questions about the nature of the sea and seafaring that are as relevant today as they were centuries ago.

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