Martin Cox, Publisher MaritimeMatters

I am an artist, maritime writer and professional photographer,  I grew up in the Port of Southampton which provided an early inspiration.  I am now based in Los Angeles, and run my business Martin Cox Photography here and hold exhibits of my landscape photographs.

I came up with the idea for MaritimeMatters in 1996 and launched a one page site the following year.  Initially the site came about to articulate my fascination with maritime topics, specifically ocean liners. By 1999 I had met and become friends with Peter Knego who was doing such stellar work in the maritime history field. Peter and I have worked and traveled together exploring liners of the world, and clearly his voice and unparalleled output in the realm of contemporary and vintage ships deserved to be heard and needed a greater platform.

I had been working on my own lengthy maritime project, writing a history of the Los Angeles Steamship Company the research took ten years. In 2009 the Steamship Historical Society of America published, (via Glencannon Press), the book that I co-wrote along with Gordon Ghareeb, filling a gap in local California maritime history.  The book “Hollywood to Honolulu; the story of the Los Angeles Steamship Company”, covers an important part of LA’s development, when the fledging city ran its own shipping line to Hawaii, on cruises and coastal voyages from the 1920s using former German transatlantic liners and other interesting ships.

Previously, I had served briefly as West Coast Editor for magazine Steamboat Bill, and did a stint as President of the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Society the group that gave me the push to write the book.

I designed and update MaritimeMatter.com, taking it from its former html platform in to the age of Content Management Sytems in 2009.  I regularly update and redesign how the site functions. Along with massive contributions from ocean liner journalist roving blogger – Peter Knego, Maritimematters also benefits from guest writers, Michael Bennett, Jonathan Boonzaier, Shawn Dake, Gordon Ghareeb and others. As we employ more web tools, so the need grows for additional skills , thus I would like to thank Anh-Phuong as technical guru and to Don Platon for help weaving through the web of new tools. Assistance from Julia Chesaree has been an invaluable at MaritimeMatters as we go from strength to strength.