Rum, Sodomy and the Lash

One of the greatest engineering feats in history, the modern US nuclear carrier is a masterpiece of technology, and the flagship of a fleet.

The film looks at men and women of color in the U.S. Merchant Marine from 1938-1975. Through chronicling the lives of these men and women who, with a median age of 82, are beset with a host of life-threatening illnesses, the movie tells how they navigated issues of racism, disparities in the workplace, gender and familial relations.

Over the serene and verdant landscape of Northern California, a man with an everlasting childlike spirit lived his last years in a cabin. A story of friendship and loneliness, George Carl Wenzlaff was a Navy veteran and postal service worker with unique artistic talents and an amazing past.

Offers audiences a unique window into a bygone era when a thrilling new invention, the motion picture camera, first captures a nation on film.

This World War II documentary rests on an unusual thesis: it argues that, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, the actions precipitated by the U.S.A.F. that truly helped turn the tide were perpetrated not by the widely-ballyhooed U.S.N. aviators or aircraft carriers, but by the American submarines - silent warriors beneath the deceptively placid ocean surface. The subs, after all, were responsible for gravely wounding Japan's industry, all but destroying the Japanese merchant fleet, and therefore preventing reinforcement of Japanese military garrisons. In relaying this story, the program draws on a series of interviews with military veterans, and endless archival footage of naval battles that chronologically tells the gripping story of the Pacific Front of the war.

Sixty-years after setting sail on the PT 658, a group of World War II veterans reminisce about their extraordinary experiences on the boat while attempting to restore it to it's original condition in a documentary that has a little something for war buffs and amateur historians alike.

Take a technological thrill ride The Magic of Flight takes you on a technological thrill ride faster, higher and wider than modern science or even your imagination! Relive the first flight of the Wright Brothers, then soar with the Blue Angels as they defy the laws of gravity. Narrated by Tom Selleck.

At the end of the Victorian era, E. W. Barton-Wright combined jiujitsu, kickboxing, and stick fighting into the "Gentlemanly Art of Self Defence" known as Bartitsu. After Barton-Wright's School of Arms mysteriously closed in 1902, Bartitsu was almost forgotten save for a famous, cryptic reference in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Empty House. Hosted by Tony Wolf and featuring interviews with Harry Cook, Emelyne Godfrey, Mark Donnelly, Graham Noble, Neal Stephenson and Will Thomas, Bartitsu: the Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes relates the fascinating history, rediscovery and revival of Barton-Wright's pioneering mixed martial art.

The small but immensely powerful Admiral Graf Spee was the pride of Hitler's naval fleet. Restricted to a limited size due to the impositions of the Treaty of Versailles, this 'pocket battleship' was still a formidable fighting force. It was faster than a battleship, and had firepower far beyond other ships of this size. It was responsible for the sinking of as many as nine Allied merchant vessels in the autumn of 1939 in the space of three months. Then, late in the year, the ship was ambushed off the coast of Uruguay by British cruisers determined to sink her. Faced with insurmountable odds, the ship's captain, Hans Langsdorff, opted to destroy his own vessel rather than capitulate to the enemy. Hitler's Lost Battleship retraces the events leading up to the ship's destruction. With high-end re-enactments, CGI reconstructions, and surprising revelations from naval researchers - all add up to shed new light on this fascinating episode in wartime history.

The film looks at the places Charles Dickens lived and worked and how he used them in his novels and stories.

This film shows the duties of a young British sailor, Lieutenant Ellison, as his submarine H.M. Artemis sails the pack ice north of Iceland to gather data to complete a scientific survey for the Hydrographic Department.

As historic ships vanish from British waters, a group of passionate volunteers fights to save the Balmoral—a 1949 passenger vessel moored in Bristol’s iconic harbour—battling time, bureaucracy, and financial struggles to preserve a piece of maritime history before it’s lost forever.

Song tells the story of the women who worked in Victorian London's clothing sweatshops, eschewing a conventional narrative in favour of a series of still photographs and acted reconstructions to show that this story has been rewritten/written-over many times before.

Relive the infamous 2012 shipwreck of the cruise ship Costa Concordia and follow the engineering feat to raise her.

Amateur taxidermist, Walter Potter, became an unlikely success by putting his creatures in human positions and scenarios, referred to as anthropomorphic taxidermy. Potter's Museum, filled with his creations and collection of oddities and curiosities dazzled millions for over a hundred years until the collection's unfortunate separation in 2003. While largely about the man and his creations, the film also takes a look at the obsessive nature of collecting, as well as the controversial history of stuffing dead animals.

Equal parts documentary, essay, and narrative,"Captain Elliot's Circle" is mostly a poetic interaction with an obscure corner of Chinese and British history. Constructed using primary source documents about the taking of Zhoushan, Britain's first choice for a seaport, in the late 1830s,this movie uses Captain Charles Elliot's reluctance to brutalize the Chinese to reflect on the cyclical nature of history and the power structures that move it. The long takes used throughout function to illustrate the dramatically different ways in which people who lived in the mid-19th century perceived time. Additionally, it represents the psychological effect of living on an island regardless of what era you were born in.The last third of the movie focuses on a young woman whose strange day job has taken her far away from the island of Zhoushan generations after Captain Charles Elliot was last there. "Captain Elliot's Circle" was shot on location in Zhoushan and Hangzhou.

14 September 1943: The legendary submarine Y1 “Katsonis” was sunk north of the island of Skiathos by the German submarine chaser UJ 2101. Through the book of XO Elias Tsoukalas who escaped capture and had to swim for nine hours to reach shore, secret documents, and crew members’ diaries, the documentary unfolds the human stories woven around the submarine. Seventy-five years later, with the support of the Hellenic Navy, we search for the submarine sunk at 253 metres depth and film the wreck for the very first time.

In 1914, the world's first trans-Antarctic expedition came to a cold stop. Trapped in ice just 60 miles from their destination, explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew found themselves in a dire situation that would play out as a two-year battle against starvation, sub-zero conditions, and the threat of being swallowed by the unforgiving Southern Ocean. Witness this incredible story of courage and survival, fueled by ship captain Frank Worsley's exceptional navigational skills, the crew's resiliency, and Shackleton's cool-headed leadership.

Young boys going into the sea water by Brighton's West Pier in the UK to pick up pennies thrown in by people on the pier.

In California's Bay Area, a painful memory lingers of the Port Chicago disaster of WWII, when hundreds of the Navy's first Black Sailors perished, and the White officers in charge were protected by the chain of command.