Ocean Modern: Liners and Literature

"Ocean liners remain one of the most powerful and admired symbols of twentieth-century modernity", according to the curators of a 2018 V&A exhibition. "No form of transport," they add, "was as romantic, remarkable or contested." This project asks why the ocean liner is so powerfully symbolic and what, exactly, it is symbolic of. In particular, it investigates the complex, conflicted meanings that are invested in the liner in literary texts, and uncovers its role in cultures of print and reading.

Between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, large steel-hulled steamships carried millions of emigrants, refugees, troops, business-people, convalescents, celebrities, tourists and students. Shipping companies were crucial to the economic and technological development of many countries. They co-operated with governments in wartime naval operations and peacetime projects of nation- and empire-building. Liners were agents of international literary culture, carrying printing presses, libraries and bookshops. Their interiors became exhibition spaces for artists and designers.

All these aspects are taken up in a wide range of novels, plays and poems by authors ranging from Claude McKay to Rebecca West, David Bone to Eugene O'Neill. Those texts - in turn - contribute to public fascination with the liner and to its broader cultural meanings. The allure of the liner derives from associations with mobility, innovation and glamour. Yet this can obscure the implication of shipping firms in oppressive and unjust practices, in contexts ranging from colonialism to armed conflict, labour disputes and forced migration. A crucial question is: can the ocean liner be a site of resistance in literary narrative or is it always aligned with the power of governments, capital and elites? In our own time, when sea crossings are still associated both with extreme luxury (all-inclusive cruises) and extreme peril (refugee small boats), this question has lost none of its resonance.

The project also asks how individual ships, and the experiences of their staff and passengers, are promoted, documented, commemorated and mythologised. This part of the research draws extensively on shipping company archives. These rich collections - including posters, brochures, and staff magazines, as well as logs, diaries and voyage scrapbooks - are mostly used by geneaologists or transport historians. They will yield new insight when compared with the darker and more ambivalent narratives found in literary texts.

Like the Clyde-built liners themselves, the project originates in Glasgow but extends its reach across the world. Shipping has shaped Scotland's 'cultural identity and economy' (Marine Scotland, Blue Economy Vision 2022). It is particularly crucial to the history, culture and built environment of the Clyde, Forth and Tay regions, and their maritime heritage communities will be key beneficiaries of - and contributors to - the research. There is much potential for knowledge exchange with former passengers and shipyard workers, local historians, and those conserving historic ships. My preparatory engagement with these groups has provided me with valuable feedback and insight, and has revealed a great appetite for knowledge about the literary and cultural narratives surrounding ships built in Scotland. These narratives allow local stories to be connected to the international iconography and mythology of the liner.

The project's findings will be presented in a book, a set of ship case studies, and a series of live and online activities designed to engage with ship enthusiasts, heritage organisations and schools. As the first study of ocean liners in literary culture, the book will break new ground in English Studies, modernist studies and book history. It will be invaluable, too, in fields where liners are already an object of study: maritime and oceanic studies; cultural geography; travel and transport history; and visual culture studies.