Edward W. Sloan

Edward (Ted) William Sloan III (1931-2012), the Charles H. Northam Professor of History, Emeritus at Trinity College, was born in Gates Mills, Ohio and graduated from University School in Shaker Heights, OH in 1949. He received his Baccalaureate and Master's degrees from Yale University, where he was a member of the 1953 Whiffenpoofs, the a capella singing group. His long teaching career began during his military service, when he taught at the Army Transportation School at Fort Eustis, VA from 1954 to 1956. He was a financial and transportation analyst at First Boston in New York, before he decided to return to teaching and received his PhD in History from Harvard University. He became a member of the faculty of Trinity College in 1963 where he served as chairman of the History department for many years and taught until his retirement in 2003.

His areas of expertise included United States history, maritime history, business history and the history of technology. He had a special interest in the impact of steam propulsion on the nineteenth-century maritime world. In addition to his work at Trinity, Sloan was an adjunct professor of Management with Rensselaer at Hartford. He also taught graduate students for many years at the Mystic Seaport Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies and undergraduates at the Williams College in Mystic program. He became a fellow of the Greenwich Maritime Institute of the University of Greenwich in 2000, and while holding this position he lectured at a number of English universities. He was an active member of the International Maritime Economic History Association. He wrote extensively on topics of maritime history.