Adrian Full has won a British Commission for Maritime History Undergraduate Dissertation Prize for his final year dissertation entitled ‘Eighteenth-Century Sailors and Remittances’. This is the third year in a row that a final year history student from the University of Plymouth has won this prestigious dissertation prize.
Adrian’s dissertation examined how Plymouth based sailors sent home money to their families between 1772 and 1778. His research illustrates themes such as sailors’ relationships with their families and connections ashore, as well as their attitudes towards the Royal Navy as an institution. This was an innovative research project that draws on a vast array of admiralty records to reconstruct how sailors stationed on men-of-war in Plymouth allocated money to their families in the 1770s. Adrian's research highlights the ways in which maritime historians can utilise and visualise data to better understand the lives and concerns of naval sailors in the eighteenth century.
The British Commission awards a small number of £75 prizes each year for undergraduate dissertations in the broad field of maritime history. The Commission’s aims are to encourage students to pursue maritime questions in their final year research, and to reward the best of that work. Take a look at their website