Chi Chi Huang and Alison Bashford write in the February 2025 issue of the IJMH about “Maritime geographies and the borders of disease: Three historical precedents of quarantined vessels”

Read it in open access at this link

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/08438714241306832

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, vessels were suspended across the oceans, unable to dock and with passengers and crew denied local permission to disembark. These scenarios were another way in which the effects of this virus were understood to be ‘unprecedented’, seemingly disrupting existing protocols, regulations and lines of authority. However, this article historicizes the stranded cruise ship in examples from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries along Australia’s coastline. By focusing on the finer processes of maritime quarantine that have shaped this nation, the authors argue that maritime quarantine routinely worked across and between multiple authorities, almost always crossing jurisdictional boundaries. Furthermore, these processes engaged with rapidly changing information between domestic and international ports to effectively manage outbreaks of infectious diseases, frequently using the vessel’s mobility as part of the quarantine strategy.