Showing titles in Maritime History & Piracy

Most times left solely within the confine of plantation narratives, slavery was far from a land-based phenomenon. This book reveals for the first time how it took critical shape at sea. Expanding the gaze even more widely, the book centers on how the oceanic transport of human cargoes - known as the infamous Middle Passage - comprised a violently regulated process foundational to the institution of bondage. Sowande' Mustakeem's groundbreaking study goes inside the Atlantic slave trade to explore the social conditions and human costs embedded in the world of maritime slavery. 

Curlew Coast is the author’s second book about East Anglia’s maritime past. Using the coastal towns of Suffolk as a framework, the book explores a diversity of subjects from rope making to ship burials and from coastal erosion to the early navigators. Curlew Coast covers the period from when the Anglo-Saxons first sailed up the East Anglian rivers, to the age of the railway when the engine began to take over from sail.

On May 28, 1914, the RMS Empress of Ireland began her 192nd trip across the Atlantic from Quebec City, Canada, en route to Liverpool, England, carrying 1,056 passengers and a crew of 423. In the early hours of May 29, fog descended on the St. Lawrence River, and the ocean liner was rammed by the Storstad, a Norwegian coal ship. In the fourteen minutes it took for the Empress of Ireland to sink, there was time to launch only four of the forty lifeboats, and rather than women and children first, it was everyone for themselves.

The sea is the largest museum on earth, with more than a million lost ships resting in its depths. Those shipwrecks date back thousands of years, some from civilizations long vanished, others from more recent history. Some are famous, others obscure and unremembered but each has a story to tell. In The Great Museum of the Sea, archaeologist, museum director, television host, journalist, and award-winning author James Delgado takes the listener on a personal tour of the world's wrecks, including many of the more than a hundred lost ships he has personally discovered and investigated.

During the height of the blizzard of 1978, the tanker Global Hope floundered on the shoals off the Massachusetts coast. The Coast Guard dispatched a patrol boat, but was soon in as much trouble as the tanker. Then pilot boat captain Frank Quirk, hearing of the Coast Guard's troubles on his radio, decided to act.

A cento anni di distanza dalla fatale collisione, Massimo Polidoro ricostruisce la vicenda del Titanic in un racconto corale che intreccia le storie di ufficiali e passeggeri, naufraghi e soccorritori, scienziati e avventurieri. Attraverso gli occhi dei protagonisti assisteremo all'intero svolgimento di una storia intramontabile. Saremo accolti a bordo. Visiteremo la nave e i suoi meravigliosi saloni. Incontreremo i personaggi più interessanti. Vivremo le emozioni della traversata.

Using contemporary sources, Nigel Cawthorne turns the spotlight on the reality of pirate life, revealing the truth behind the legends. It gives us an insight into infamous the men and women who plundered ship and shore, including Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, and Mary Read. We learn of the hazy distinction between pirates and state-approved privateers who were used to maintain empire, as well as the Port Royal pirate base in Jamaica—known as the "wickedest city in the world".

This audiobook attempts to answer as many of those questions as possible through an informal, narrative style. It focuses on the overall experience and the feelings and emotions of the people going through it rather than just on facts and figures. It covers every aspect of the Titanic saga from inception and construction to the recent rediscovery of the ship. It also examines the impact of the disaster on society and culture.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A “thrilling and superbly crafted” (The Wall Street Journal) account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook’s death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day. One of...

At the outbreak of the War of 1812, America's prospects looked dismal. It was clear that the primary battlefield would be the open ocean but America's war fleet, only 20 ships strong, faced a practiced British navy of more than a thousand men-of-war. Still, through a combination of nautical deftness and sheer bravado, the American navy managed to take the fight to the British and turn the tide of the war.

Descubrimiento AccidentalEn 1972, un niño de doce años en el norte de California recibió diez dólares por limpiar una vieja cabaña. La familia que la había poseído —los Tibbits— ya se había llevado lo que quería. Lo que quedó era basura: polvo, excremento de ratón, herramientas rotas y un viejo baúl cansado en la esquina. Dentro de ese baúl había una sola bolsa de papel marrón. Dentro de esa bolsa había una bomba durmiente. Ken Washburn lanzó la bolsa en su cómoda y se olvidó de ella durante ocho años.

Der unerschrockenste Spion zu Napoleons Zeiten. Zwei Romane in einem Sammelband. "Jagd nach Vergeltung" England, 1803. Thomas Grey, Kapitän der britischen Marine und Spion im Dienste seiner Majestät, hat sich nach einem schweren Schicksalsschlag zurückgezogen und möchte nach Amerika auswandern. Der kürzlich mit den Franzosen geschlossene Frieden verspricht eine gefahrlose Überfahrt. Plötzlich kommt es jedoch zu einem Feuergefecht mit einem französischen Schiff. Grey überlebt und landet in Portugal, wo er auf einen Anwerber des französischen Geheimdienstes trifft.

With the suspense of a thriller and the emotional depth of human drama, Beneath Waves and Shadows is the untold, meticulously researched story of survival after a 1906 shipwreck in the Pacific Northwest. On a mild January day in 1906, the Valencia steamed out of San Francisco and began the...

Long before Robinson Crusoe became a novel, real people faced the open sea alone. This is not a retelling of fiction. It is the quiet, true history behind one of literature's most enduring ideas: what happens when a person is left entirely alone.

From internationally bestselling historian Giles Milton comes a gripping tale of exploration, survival, and geopolitical power in the Arctic Circle. The year was 1913. Charismatic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson was obsessed with a frozen speck of land in the Siberian Arctic: Wrangel Island...

Shipwrecks selects the sinkings with the greatest loss of life, the most famous vessels, the richest treasure troves, the most archaeologically significant wreck sites and the most daring rescues. It tells the tales of the fate of the victims, the disastrous mistakes made by ships' captains and navigators, the impossible conditions faced at sea, the courage of those who survived and the audacious attempts to raise what now lies at the bottom of the sea.

The true story of the deadliest submarine in World War II and the courageous captain who survived torture and imprisonment at the hands of the enemy. There was one submarine that outfought all other boats in the Silent Service in World War II: the USS Tang. Captain Richard Hetherington O’Kane...

A brilliantly sunny day, and then the explosion; on what had been an ordinary weekday, there is suddenly fire, smoke, confusion, bodies, panic... On May 7, 1915, the ocean liner Lusitania was struck by a terrifying new weapon-and became a casualty of a terrible new kind of war. This is a vivid...

From the author of Valiant Ambition, the riveting and critically acclaimed bestseller and major motion picture starring Chris Hemsworth, directed by Ron Howard Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Ben Whishaw, and Brendan Gleeson star in the film based on this National Book Award–winning account...

The Sea Beggar: An Apprentice is the first of a series of a historical novels about Ephraim Bogardus who was a Hudson River mariner. He was a Dutch American who lived in the Hudson Valley and operated Hudson River Sloops. Ephraim Bogardus lived between 1687 and 1770. In this novel Ephraim tells his story of how he learned to be privateer during early days Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713). The term sea beggar or in Dutch watergeuzen means a sea robber and was applied to Dutch privateers. Ephraim Bogardus considered himself to be a watergeuzen or sea beggar.