Showing titles in Maritime History & Piracy

April 14, 1912. It was an unforgettable night. In the last hours before the Titanic struck the iceberg, passengers in all classes were enjoying unprecedented luxuries. Innovations in food, drink, and décor made this voyage the apogee of Edwardian elegance. Veronica Hinke’s painstaking research and deft touch bring the Titanic’s tragic but eternally glamorous maiden voyage back to life. In addition to stirring accounts of individual tragedy and survival, The Last Night on the Titanic offers tried-and-true recipes, newly invented styles, and classic cocktails.

So Others May Live: Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers: Saving Lives, Defying Death is the award-winning untold story of the US Coast Guard's quiet but resolute rescue swimmers. From deep ocean caves on the Oregon coast to the panicked and chaotic streets of post-Katrina New Orleans, here are their stunningly heroic stories.

This audiobook will take you on a journey through time, showing how piracy began, grew, and even still exists today. From ancient sailors to modern pirates, you’ll uncover fascinating stories that bring this dangerous world to life.

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...

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.

For 444 years, there has been speculation about the location of Sir Francis Drake's landing site at Nova Albion and where he hid the greatest buried treasure of all time. What follows is an account of my 22 year quest to provide the answers to these questions, and to correct the historical record about Drake's Plate of Brass.

Mutiny on the Spanish Main tells the dramatic story of HMS Hermione, a British frigate which, in 1797, was the site of the bloodiest mutiny in British naval history, which saw the death of her captain and many of her officers. Though her crew handed her over to the Spanish, Hermione was subsequently recaptured in a daring raid on a Caribbean port two years later.

Real-life accounts of the world’s most notorious pirates—both men and women, from the Golden Age of Piracy and beyond—compiled by the New York Times bestselling author of A True Account: Hannah Masury’s Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself A Penguin Classic Spanning three...

For more than 5,000 years, the seas have challenged, rewarded and punished the brave sailors who set forth to explore it. This history of the seas and sailing tells the remarkable story of those individuals—whether they lived to tell the tale themselves or not. From the early Polynesian seafarers and the first full circumnavigations of the globe, to explorers picking their way through the coral reefs of the West Indies, this audiobook tells the compelling story of life at sea that lies behind man's search for new lands, new trade, conquest and uncharted waters.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER From the bestselling author of The Taking of Jemima Boone, the unbelievable true story of a real-life Swiss Family Robinson (and their dog) who faced sharks, shipwreck, and betrayal. On December 10, 1887, a shark fishing boat disappeared. On board the doomed vessel were...

Two Years Before the Mast is a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834 and published in 1840. While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles that affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway), and being something of a nonconformist, left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor.

The Gulf of Mexico presents a compelling, salt-streaked narrative of the Earth's 10th-largest body of water. In this beautifully written volume, John S. Sledge explores the people, ships, and cities that have made the Gulf's human history and culture so rich. Many famous figures who sailed the Gulf's viridian waters are highlighted, including Ponce de Leon, Robert Cavelier de La Salle, Francis Drake, Elizabeth Agassiz, Ernest Hemingway, and Charles Dwight Sigsbee. Sledge also introduces a fascinating array of people connected to maritime life in the Gulf.

Two Years Before the Mast, written by Richard Henry Dana, provides a vivid account of "the life of a common sailor at sea". Dana sails from Boston, around Cape Horn, stopping in several ports along the California coast including San Diego, San Pedro, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco. On the return trip around Cape Horn in the middle of the Antarctic winter Dana describes terrifying storms and incredible beauty, giving vivid descriptions of icebergs and the scurvy that afflicts members of the crew.

For the first time, Shipwrecked and Rescued tells the near-tragic story of lost and desperate shipmates floundering for two days in the deep snow and near-zero temperatures. Jorgensen's detailed research and collection of 100 rare historical photos chronicles what happened, introduces the key players, and finally reveals the fate of those collectors' prizes in the century since.

Frequently depicted as “Scandinavian scavengers”, warlike pirates, raiders, and invaders, the Vikings have lately surfaced from the depths of history to become pop culture’s most adored ruffians. For Prof. Fee, this recent craze for all things Viking is a mixed blessing. The spike in popular fascination often occasions a need to separate the wheat from the chaff: fact from fiction, history from myth, literature from legend.

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. 

The fearsome wrath of the storms that brew over the Great Lakes has challenged and defeated some of the staunchest vessels constructed in the shipyards of port cities along the US and Canadian lakeshores. Here Richard Gebhart tells the tales of some of these ships and their captains and crews, from their launches to their sad demises—or sometimes, their celebrated retirements. This volume is a must-hear for anyone intrigued by the maritime history of the Great Lakes.

Are you ready to explore the rich history and breathtaking beauty of Nova Scotia? “Exploring Nova Scotia: A Journey Through History and Must-See Destinations” takes you on an unforgettable journey through time, offering a perfect blend of cultural insights and travel inspiration.

In 1808, an American merchant ship happened upon an uncharted island in the South Pacific and unwittingly solved the biggest nautical mystery of the era: the whereabouts of a band of fugitives who, after seizing their vessel, had disappeared into the night with their Tahitian companions. Seven generations later, the island is still inhabited by descendants of the original mutineers, marooned like modern castaways.

John Valliant's essay about the sinking of the Fantome, a Caribbean pleasure cruiser, during Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and the subsequent lawsuit. The disaster was the Atlantic’s worst sailing accident in over forty years.