Undergraduate Prizes:
Undergraduate Achievement in Maritime History
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.
Subjects eligible for consideration reflect the Commission’s view of maritime history as a wide-ranging discipline. It includes topics such as shipping, seafaring, ports, seapower, maritime labour, coastal communities, trade, exploration, shipbuilding, navigation, and fishing, and embraces a wide range of political, economic, social, technological and cultural approaches.
Nominations must be made by Heads of Department or equivalent, and the closing date for entries is 1 August in each year. Final year dissertations awarded first class marks are eligible for consideration. Project work will also be considered where extensive use is made of primary evidence, and where the portfolio includes an extended piece of writing.
To make a nomination please complete the Undergraduate Prize Form and upload the necessary documents here.
Congratulations to our 2026 Prize Winners!
Marcus Bellamy (University of Plymouth), Whitehaven: A New Town in a Growing World, 1680-1780
Samuel Cantor (University of Plymouth), The Inner Life of ‘The Fighting “G”’: HMS Gloucester’s Lower Deck Aboard and Ashore, 1939-41
Edward Clark (Durham University), Contradictory Constitutions: Smuggling, Liberties, and the Limits of the British Fiscal-Military State in Guernsey, c. 1683-1807
Joshua Unthank (University of the West of England), West Country Merchant Operation and Identity and the Forging of a British Global Trade Policy, 1550-1620
Yuen Sum Sophia Wong (University of Edinburgh), Worrying Water Whisperers: Colonial Understandings of the Orang Laut through Discourses of Race, Piracy, and Civilisation
Shelley Yang (University of Cambridge), ‘The Sea in Augustine’s Political Thought’
For further information contact info@maritimehistory.org.uk
