Christianity on the Seas: recommended resources

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BOOKS

For more on early Christian sea journeys, including Paul’s sea missions, see Eckhard Schnabel, Early Christian Mission (2004), and N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography (2018). For Brendan the Navigator and other monks, see Lucy Menzies, Saint Columba of Iona (1949); Jonathan Wooding, ed., The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature (2000); Clara Strijbosch, The Seafaring Saint (2000); Gearóid Ó Donnchadha, St. Brendan of Kerry, the Navigator (2004); Sean Duffy, Routledge Revivals: Medieval Ireland (2005); and Edmund Newell, The Sacramental Sea: A Spiritual Voyage through Christian History (2019). Younger readers or those looking for a fun fictional account should try Sandy Dengler, The Emerald Sea (1994). 

On the transatlantic slave trade, read Herbert Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade (1999); John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (1998); David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (2000); Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (2005); and Douglas Egerton, Alison Games, Jane Landers, Kris Lane, and Donald Wright, eds., The Atlantic World: A History, 1400–1492 (2007). Zero in on Bartolome de Las Casas with Lawrence Clayton, Bartolomé de las Casas: Voice of Justice in the Americas (2025), or read the man himself in an English translation of A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1999).

Follow the Mayflower’s journey with Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War (2007). Read vivid accounts of eighteenth-century life at sea in Stephen Russell Berry, A Path in the Mighty Waters: Shipboard Life and Atlantic Crossings to the New World (2015). For specific eighteenth-century seafaring figures, see Jonathan Aitken, John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace (2007); Tom Schwanda and Mark Noll, Emergence of Evangelical Spirituality: The Age of Edwards, Newton, and Whitefield (2016); and Bruce Hindmarsh and Craig Borlase, Amazing Grace (2023). 

Abundant resources cover the great missions century, and here are a few to get you started: William Pakenham Walsh, Modern Heroes of the Mission Field (1915) and Gerald Anderson, ed., Mission Legacies: Biographical Studies of the Leaders of the Modern Mission Movement (1994). Focus on William Carey with Timothy George, Faithful Witness: The Life and Mission of William Carey (1991); similarly, read more about Adoniram and Ann Judson with Jason Duesing, Adoniram Judson (2012). Find more resources on these missionaries and more in the websites section. For sea missions in the South Pacific, read Alan Tippett, The Deep Sea Canoe: The Story of Third World Missionaries in the South Pacific (2005). 

Discover more about navy chaplains and wartime Christianity with Harold Langley, Social Reform in the United States Navy 1798–1862 (1967); Gordon Taylor, The Sea Chaplains (1978); Michael Shay, Sky Pilots (2014); Clifford Drury, The History of the Chaplain Corp (2018); and Robert Doyle, Men of God, Men of War (2024). The story of the US Merchant Marine is told in Brian Herbert, Forgotten Heroes: The Heroic Story of the United States Merchant Marine (2004); also read the story of Leonard La Rue in Bill Gilbert, Ship of Miracles (2000) and Philip Lacovara, The Mariner and the Monk (2020).

Meet Peter Anson in Michael Yelton, Peter Anson: Monk, Writer and Artist (2005). John C. Patteson’s cousin Charlotte Yonge wrote Life of John Coleridge Patteson. For John Ashley read Robert Miller, Dr. Ashley’s Pleasure Yacht (2017); for Robert Jermain Thomas see Yoo Hae-seok, The First Protestant Martyr in Korea from Wales (2026); and for Dawson Trotman see Betty Lee Skinner, Daws: A Man Who Trusted God (2019).

To overview ministries to seafarers, start with Roald Kverndal, Seamen’s Missions: Their Origins and Early Growth (1986); Ronald Hope, Poor Jack: The Perilous History of the Merchant Seaman (2001); Ted Mall, Developing Ministry to Seafarers (2002); Paul Mooney, Maritime Mission: History, Developments, A New Perspective (2005); and Stephen Friend, Fishing for Souls (2018). 

Introductions to reform ministries include Alston Kennerley, British Seamen’s Missions and Sailors’ Homes—1815 to 1970 (1989) and A. D. Couper, Voyages of Abuse: Seafarers Human Rights and International Shipping (1999). Survey alcohol and the temperance movement in Jack Blocker, American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform (1989); Jack Blocker, David Fahey, and Ian Tyrrell, eds., Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: An International Encyclopedia (2003); and Jennifer Woodruff Tait, The Poisoned Chalice (2011). 

For specific ministries, including Stella Maris, Mission to Seafarers, and International Christian Maritime Association, see Francis Frayne, What Is the Apostleship of the Sea? (1965); Michael Jacob, The Flying Angel Story (1973); Robert Miller, Ship of Peter: The Catholic Sea Apostolate and the Apostleship of the Sea (1995); Paul Mooney, A History of ICMA (2019); and Jason Zuidema and David Wells, 50 Years of Caring for Seafarers in Port Houston (2019).

 

Explore modern maritime change and ministry with Robert Miller, From Shore to Shore: A History of the Church and the Merchant Seafarer (1989); Robert Gardiner, ed., The Shipping Revolution: The Modern Merchant Ship (1992); Roald Kverndal, The Way of the Sea (2008); and David Reid, Ship and Shore: An Insider Explains the Maritime World (2021). 

PAST CH ISSUES

Several issues of Christian History touch on Christianity on the seas and other topics covered in this issue. Here are a few: 

#1: Zinzendorf and the Moravians

#25: The Unconventional Dwight L. Moody 

#33: Christianity and the Civil War

#35: Colombus & Christianity

#36: William Carey and the Great Missions Century

#38: George Whitefield

#41: The American Puritans

#47: Paul and His Times

#53: William Wilberforce and the Century of Reform

#60: How the Irish Were Saved

#63: A Severe Salvation

#69: Charles and John Wesley

#81: John Newton

#90: Adoniram & Ann Judson

#121: Faith in the Foxholes

#130: Latin American Christianity

VIDEOS FROM VISION VIDEO

Several films at Redeem TV and Vision Video relate to this issue: Servant of Christ: Robert Jermain Thomas; Amazing Grace; Newton’s Grace; The Bible Collection: Saint Paul; The Incredible Journey: John Wesley; Candle in the Dark; St. Patrick: Pilgrimage of Peace; My Journey to Life on the Trail of Celtic Saints. Our Torchlighters episodes for children feature many figures discussed in this issue, including Patrick, John Wesley, John Newton, R. J. Thomas, William Carey, and Adoniram and Ann Judson.

WEBSITES 

Some of the ministries to seafarers mentioned in this issue are still in operation today. Visit the International Christian Maritime Association and the North American Maritime Ministry Association online to get started. Through the NAMMA website, you can also find multiple affiliated agencies—such as the Apostleship of the Sea and Global Maritime Ministries, to name just a few. Mercy Ships, a ministry to those in need at sea, also operates around the world today. 

For further resources on the voyage of Saint Brendan and the full story in Latin, see Dickinson College, which includes a helpful introduction and history. For a more visual experience, see the Looking North blog, which documents historian Tim Severin’s reenactment of Brendan’s voyage. 

William Carey University’s Center for Study on the Life and Work of William Carey can get you started on Carey and maritime missions during that time. Find more resources at Boston University’s History of Missiology, which has helpful sections on John Eliot, Thomas Coke, William Carey, Adoniram Judson, Ann Hasseltine Judson, Samuel and Harriet Newell, and D. L. Moody, to name a few figures from this issue. And you might examine the documentary Ship of Miracles.

Finally Gutenberg.org, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, and Internet Modern Sourcebook have primary sources. CH 

By the authors and editors

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