Peter Wells

Peter Wells has been fascinated by maps and the sea for many years. Although coming from a musical background he seeks out antique maps and maintains a strong interest in history and art as well as music. By profession he is an examiner in music performance for Trinity College London, but by interest his focus is on the hydrographic work of the Restoration period navy. An MA (by research) in History of Art at the University of York led on to his current work as a post-graduate researcher in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative writing at UEA. He works under the supervision of Ass. Prof Ian Thomson and Prof. Claire Jowitt, writing an academic biography of Captain Greenvile Collins (1643-94), whose magnum opus, the atlas Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot (1693), was the result of the first systematic survey of the British coastline to be carried out entirely by English endeavour. Prior to this research Peter spent nearly a decade caring for the historic ‘jewel-box’ church of St Mary in Stoke D’Abernon, Surrey; a place of ancient origin filled with historic treasures, before embarking on several years of wide international travel conducting music exams from beginner to post-graduate diploma levels.

Peter’s research sits at the intersection of cartography, maritime culture and late C17th politics. The subject of his biographical work, Captain Greenvile Collins, was a mid-ranking officer in the Restoration navy, an organisation that developed into the biggest economic and industrial concern in Britain. Peter’s work explores how hydrography transitioned from a gentlemanly pursuit to a professional naval activity and seeks to explain how this emerged within of a culture of intellectual enquiry, fostered by organisations such as the Royal Society (1660), with the active encouragement of the royal Stuart brothers, Charles II and James II. Major figures of the period who populate Collins’s story include Samuel Pepys, after his ‘diary’ period, when he was instrumental in the creation of a ‘modern’ navy, ‘ingenious’ men of scientific enquiry like Sir Robert Southwell and Captain John Wood and ‘precursors of Nelson’ such as the admirals Sir John Narborough and Sir Cloudesley Shovell, all of whom influenced Collins. The story culminates with an examination of the role of the navy in the upheaval of the Dutch invasion in 1688, and the part that Collins’s maps played in shaping that political reverse into a domestic English event, later recast as the ‘Glorious Revolution’.