Regent Voyager Singapore to Sydney

Join Andy for a cruise on Regent Voyager from Singapore to Sydney, December 2019-January 2020.  Andy will be giving the following presentations.

Singapore in Peace and War

The stunning failure of the defenses of “Fortress Singapore” during the first months of World War II in the Pacific signaled the collapse of the allied position in Indochina and the Malay Peninsula.  It also seemingly locked into place Tokyo’s “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere,” a resource-rich empire spanning East Asia and the vast spaces of the Western Pacific that seemingly resembled an eastern, maritime counterpart to Berlin’s ambitions in Europe.  The mid-20^thcentury history of Singapore’s, fall, occupation, and relief is a fascinating part of the story behind this city-state’s remarkable role in Asia today.

Maritime Chokepoints and Strategic Waters

Beginning with the Age of Sail, the geography of the oceans, as well as their winds and currents, became important to governments and their navies.  The Strait of Hormuz is today the best known of these choke points, but other such places have been flash points throughout history.

Amelia Earhart

The search for the missing aviatrix, lost somewhere in the islands of the South Pacific while piloting her Lockheed “Electra” aircraft around the world, continues apace today.  The quest for the site of her disaster and disappearance, and the solution to the mystery about what happened to the bold and beautiful woman and her hard-drinking navigator Fred Noonan on July 3, 1937, still attract a level of interest seen before only in the search for Sir John Franklin’s Royal Navy expedition, lost with all hands in the Canadian Arctic in 1848.

Horrible Shipwreck!

“A full, true and particular account of the melancholy loss of the British convict ship Amphitrite, the 31st August 1833, off Boulogne, when 108 female convicts, 12 children, and 13 seamen met with a watery grave, in sight of thousands, none being saved but three.”  The wreck of Amphitrite horrified and scandalized Victorians, and prompted Parliamentary intervention and an Admiralty investigation to fix blame.

The Cook Expeditions

​Magellan introduced the Pacific Ocean to Europe, but the three Pacific expeditions of the brilliant British explorer, navigator, and marine surveyor Captain James Cook, RN, between 1768-1779 explored and charted much this vast ocean (larger than all the land masses on earth together) and opened it to European exploitation.  Cook’s murder by Hawaiian islanders in 1779 ended his life but made permanent his legacy.

Bligh and the HMS Bounty

The mutiny on board His Majesty’s transport Bounty in April 1789 ended with Captain Bligh and 18 loyal crewmen adrift in the ship’s launch with five days rations.  Their 48 day 3,600 mile voyage across open water is history’s greatest warm water survival story.

Ships, Sailors and the Sea, Maritime Technology and Ocean Commerce

Political rivalries and the quest for gold, markets, and resources drove the great age of exploration, but it was new ship designs and construction techniques, growing navigational expertise, innovative financing structures, improvements in shipboard sanitation and crew health, and the invention of marine insurance exchanges that made possible the achievements of this epic era.

Amelia Earhart

The search for the missing aviatrix, lost somewhere in the islands of the South Pacific while piloting her Lockheed “Electra” aircraft around the world, continues apace today.  The quest for the site of her disaster and disappearance, and the solution to the mystery about what happened to the bold and beautiful woman and her hard-drinking navigator Fred Noonan on July 3, 1937, still attract a level of interest seen before only in the search for Sir John Franklin’s Royal Navy expedition, lost with all hands in the Canadian Arctic in 1848.

Gallipoli and the ANZACS

The bloody stalemate on the Great War’s Western Front pushed allied strategists into thinking about alternatives.  Churchill’s dreadful idea was an amphibious attack in 1915 through the “soft underbelly” of the Central Powers, the Turkish Peninsula of Gallipoli, to capture Istanbul and open a route to Russia.  The tragic sacrifices of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps during the botched campaign are remembered every April 25^th.

Major Themes in History

A brief introduction to history’s drivers, an illustrated inventory of some factors that have broadly shaped the story of humankind for the past several millennia, and one answer to the question, “what’s a knowledge of history good for in the digital age?”