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Beginning with the purchase of the schooner Nellie May and concluding with the docking of the schooner Ernestina in the Port of New Bedford, Cape Verdeans in southeastern New England and on the Cape Verde islands off the West African coast purchased and refurbished old, decommissioned ships from New Bedford's bygone whaling and fishing era. Between 1892 and 1965, this fleet of ships, named the Cape Verdean Packet Trade, specialized in the transportation of goods, people, and news between the United States and the Cape Verde islands. The packet trade was a large-scale effort that transformed the Atlantic into a highway for Cape Verdean trade, communication, emigration, and family reunification. Cape Verdeans' radical repurposing of the packet vessels converted the Atlantic Ocean from a site of dispossession, enslavement, and immobility to a reimagined zone of possibility and freedom through mobility for African-descended peoples. These Cape Verdean–owned and operated packets assisted Cape Verdean Americans in maintaining long-term connections to loved ones separated by the Atlantic. In this way, the Cape Verdean Packet Trade's more than 1,200 voyages connected the United States to Cape Verde as part of a transnational social field and single economic universe for more than seventy years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The postal system in the American colonies is an understudied arm of the first British Empire. Although outside the main institutions of colonial administration, the post office followed the overall periodisation of imperial affairs, as America waxed and waned in London's attention. This directly shaped the geography of the post office, because American officials focused on the post's ability to connect American towns, while British officials emphasised the transatlantic connection of the postal packet ships. The packets, however, were not as important to transatlantic communications as they imagined, which led the American officials to resist when London wanted to make New York City the headquarters of the American post. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article measures technological progress in oceanic shipping directly by using a large database of daily log entries from British, Dutch, and Spanish ships to estimate daily sailing speed in different wind conditions from 1750 to 1850. Against the consensus among economic (but not maritime) historians that the technology of sailing ships was fairly static during this time, we find that average sailing speeds of British East India Company and Navy ships in moderate to strong winds rose considerably after the 1770s. Driving this progress was the introduction of coppering in the 1780s, but subsequent rises are probably due to a continuous evolution of sails and rigging, and improved hulls that allowed a greater area of sail to be set safely in a given wind. By contrast, the speeds of Dutch and Spanish vessels were stagnant. Using separate data on the crossing times of Atlantic mail packets, we find gradual progress from the 1750s, followed by marked improvements when American packets appeared in the 1820s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay discusses how maritime migrations contribute to movements of ideas across transnational ethnic communities. It focuses on actors from the African Grove, a New York City-based African American theatre company. Actors in this company worked as stewards on transatlantic packet ships where the architecture of the ship supported intercultural exchanges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how and why New York City became the military headquarters of Great Britain from 1696 to 1783. The Royal Army chose the city to base its operations because of the location of Manhattan as terminus of the transatlantic packet ship. Geopolitics was also considered as Manhattan had a border with French and Iroquois. Generals also benefit from a fixed headquarter which serves as a default location for a meeting place.

The wrecking of the Falmouth Postal Packet Hanover in 1763 led to three legal disputes and two court cases-in 1766 and 1997. This article recounts the origins and course of these disputes. It examines what the resolution of the 18th-century case and the second dispute has revealed of the law and practice of marine insurance in the mid 18th century. It further examines what the 20th-century case has revealed concerning the tension between ancient principles of commercial salvage and modern principles of heritage protection. Somewhat fortuitously, the examination of the case provides an opportunity to advance a simple solution to this conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on excavation of the wreck of the British Postal Packet Hanover, which sank in Hanover Cover off the coast of North Cornwall, England in 1763. It talks about the methodology of excavation efforts which used a jack-up rig and unmanned submersible pumps and hand-held suction dredges to reduce sand levels. It comments on items recovered from the wreck, including a copper-alloy bell, a longshank anchor, and a total of 60 guns and cannon ranging from one to nine pounders.

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