EGR Taylor lecture: lightning at sea in the 18th and 19th centuries - Dr Sara Caputo

Lightning accidents are relatively rare ashore, but in the age of sail it was extremely common for vessels and seamen to be struck. Nonetheless, this type of danger remains understudied by maritime historians. Lightning resulted in disrupted navigation, damaged vessels, and numerous serious or lethal injuries.

This lecture will use a range of printed and archival sources from Britain and Western Europe to investigate the ways in which natural philosophers' understanding of lightning, shipboard surgeons' limited training on the matter, and inventors' bids to protect nautical instruments and infrastructure from strikes interacted with sailors' vernacular and embodied knowledge.

Lightning shaped the maritime world to an extent that is yet to be fully recognised.

About the speaker

Dr Sara Caputo is currently a Senior Research Fellow, Director of Studies in History, and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Magdalene College and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. From October 2025, she will be Barbara and Dietrich Schultz Assistant Professor in History at Magdalene College.

Her first monograph, Foreign Jack Tars: The British Navy and Transnational Seafarers during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023.

Her second book, Tracks on the Ocean: A History of Trailblazing, Maps, and Maritime Travel, appeared with Profile Books and The University of Chicago Press in 2024.