North American Society for Oceanic History
The North American Society for Oceanic History (NASOH) is the United States’ national group for professionals who study maritime history, including historians, underwater archaeologists, archivists, librarians, and museum specialists. It is affiliated with the American Historical Association. NASOH began in 1973 to provide a forum for maritime history and remains focused on studying and promoting it. Its goals are to help members share information about the seas, lakes, and inland waterways; highlight books, articles, and documents on naval and maritime history; and work with local, regional, national, international, and government groups to raise awareness of North America’s naval and maritime heritage. NASOH also houses the U.S. Commission on Maritime History, a member organization of the International Commission for Maritime History. The society’s records are kept at Joyner Library, East Carolina University.
NASOH holds an annual academic conference in a different maritime setting each year, where members present papers on current research. Meetings have taken place across the United States, Canada, Bermuda, and at various maritime locations, linking national and global maritime history to local and regional activities.
The society awards several honors, including the K. Jack Bauer Award for distinguished service to NASOH and maritime history, and the Charles Dana Gibson Award for the best article on North American maritime history in a peer‑reviewed journal. Each year NASOH selects the John Lyman Book Awards in six categories: Canadian naval and maritime history, U.S. naval history, U.S. maritime history, science and technology, reference works and published primary sources, and biography/autobiography.
Graduate student awards include the Chad Smith Student Travel Grants to help cover travel to the annual meeting for presenting a paper; the Clark G. Reynolds Student Paper Award for the best graduate student paper at the conference, which includes publication assistance in The Northern Mariner, NASOH membership, and a plaque; and the James C. Bradford Dissertation Research Fellowship for Ph.D. students with a completed dissertation proposal.
NASOH publishes a Newsletter to keep members informed. Since 2007, it has published The Northern Mariner (TNM) with the Canadian Nautical Research Society. The society also publishes books from its annual conferences and plans to release teaching handbooks on maritime history.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 18:56 (CET).