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Felix Driver, Professor of Human Geography, Royal Holloway University of London, will be presenting tomorrow’s British Maritime History seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London. Material memories of travel: the albums of a Victorian naval surgeon This seminar considers the visual archives of maritime scientific exploration, from coastal sketches to ethnographic observations. It focuses on the albums of John Linton Palmer, a British naval surgeon who served in the Pacific in the 1850s and 1860s, which are today part of the collections of the Royal Geographical Society. Through their drawing, recording and collecting, naval surgeons like Linton Palmer played a significant role in the development of natural history and ethnology during the nineteenth century. The lecture discusses the historical significance and potential contemporary uses of these albums in the context of three forms of memory-making: the recording of topographic, antiquarian, ethnographic, microscopic and other data by means of sketches; the assembling of such materials into personalised albums, part of a distinctive nineteenth-century naval tradition; and the contemporary uses of visual heritage in a variety of contexts from indigenous land claims to art exhibitions, including the 'Artist and Empire' exhibition opening at Tate Britain on 25 November 2015. The seminar will take place in the Court Room at 17.15. Full details of the British Maritime History Seminars are at http://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/events/bmhs