Season 4, Episode 1: Jefferson’s Embargo in Frenchman Bay, 1807-1809
Guest: Joshua Smith
Air Date: March 2, 2023
Host: Jenna Jandreau
Joshua Smith chats about what drew him to maritime history, and how he found his way to writing about MDI’s response to the Jefferson embargo. Smith discusses customs agents, collections officers, smugglers, private citizens, and more, and how their lives were impacted by a ban on all foreign maritime trade.
About Our Guest
Joshua Smith grew up on Cape Cod and coastal Maine. He holds degrees from the University of St. Andrews, Maine Maritime Academy, East Carolina University, and the University of Maine. He is author of Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists, and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783-1820, which won the John Lyman Award in American Maritime History in 2007, and edited Voyages: Documents in American Maritime History, 1492-Present, a two-volume sourcebook in maritime history created in conjunction with the National Maritime Historical Society. Smith has also written a monograph with a Canadian perspective entitled Battle for the Bay: The Naval War of 1812, published by the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society.
His latest book, Making Maine: Statehood and the War of 1812, was published in 2022 by University of Massachusetts Press.
Smith lives with his family on Long Island, where he is a professor of Humanities at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, as well as Director of the American Merchant Marine Museum, both in Kings Point, New York.
Chebacco articles by Joshua Smith
- “A Dark and Stormy Night”: Jefferson’s Embargo in Frenchman Bay, 1807-1809 (2023)