Peter N. Davies is Emeritus Professor of Economic History at Liverpool University. Former President of the International Commission for Maritime History and of the International Maritime Economic History Association, Visiting Professor at Musashi University, Tokyo, and at Shudo University, Hiroshima. Books include The Trade Makers, Elder Dempster in West Africa (1973), The Man Behind the Bridge: Colonel Toosey and the River Kwai (1991), The Business, Life and Letters of Frederick Cornes (2008).