Maritime History

• Home
  Do you believe that you can define a person by the home they live in and the possessions they surround themselves with? Do the books on their shelves and the paint on their walls give away their personality, and what would you think about someone who lived in a white, minimal space with nothing at ...
• The Wreckers
  Bella Bathurst's first book, the acclaimed The Lighthouse Stevensons, told the story of Scottish lighthouse construction by the ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson. Now she returns to the sea to search out the darker side of those lights, detailing the secret history of shipwrecks and the predatory...
• Burning Cold
  During the evening of October 4, 1980, in the Pacific Ocean nearly 330 miles from Valdez, Alaska, a fire engulfed the engine room of the Prinsendam, a Holland America cruise ship carrying 320 passengers, most of them elderly. As the fire raged out of control, the ship's captain faced the most dire ...
• Broken Angels
  For one woman, Nancye O'Reilly, this shocking path of events is real. Such tragedies would have destroyed a lesser woman, but Nancye took control of her life and made some crucial decisions to improve her lot and that of her two remaining sons. As a result of her extraordinary experiences, she is n...
• Limeys
  Limeys is the dramatic history of Dr James Lind's super-human efforts to find a cure for scurvy in the face of prejudice and political and establishment antipathy. Today Lime Juice Cordial from Cadbury- Schweppes is enjoyed not only by sailors, but by millions worldwide as the world's first ever so...
• Ghost Ship
  I am so pleased to have written my first children's book and to have my dear friend Wendell Minor illustrate it. I thought it would be a daunting project, but with six grandchildren and eleven stepgrandchildren, I've been telling stories to children for a long time.-- Mary Higgins Clark Thomas l...
• The Ancient And Modern History Of The Maritime Ports Of Ireland
  This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages,...
• The Atlantean Irish
  The Irish identity is best approached by sea. For 8000 years the island has been a haven for intrepid navigators and a trading-post absorbing goods and people from all points of the compass. The reduction of the Irish to the fanciful title of Celts h...
• The Vikings
  "Oh, Lord, save us from the rage of the Nordic people." -Ninth-century French prayer One moment they were a mere speck on the sea; the next, a murderous force slashing its way into unprotected monasteries and villages; routing proud armies; and pillaging villages and kidnapping innoc...
• Ambassador to the Penguins
  In 1912, a young naturalist named Robert Cushman Murphy was offered the opportunity of a lifetime - to spend two years on one of the last Yankee whaleships out of New Bedford, on a voyage to Antarctica. Only recently married, Murphy had many regrets at leaving his wife Grace so early in their life ...
• Resolute
  This amazing high-seas adventure encompasses the search for the Northwest Passage in the early 1800s a renowned explorer and his crew of 128 men who vanish during an 1845 expedition 39 incredible, heroic rescue missions a ghost ship drifting for more...
• Around Manhattan Island
  The port of New York, Manhattan Harbor is always a'bustle any resident or visitor to New York is quick to recognize the integral part the port plays in the life of the city, but the vessels that keep it alive are rarely focused on. In these six stories, Brian Cudahy provides us with a unique and wo...
• The Abandoned Ocean
  THE ABANDONED OCEAN offers an in-depth appraisal of United States maritime policy from the establishment of a merchant marine immediately after the Revolutionary War through radical industry transformations of the late twentieth century. In this sweeping analysis of federal policies that promote, r...
• Brutality on Trial
  Brutality on Trial tells the story of landmark legal victories against abuse on the high seas. These were the first documented violations of the Seamen's Act of 1915, signed into law by Woodrow Wilson to hold officers and ship owners legally accountable for abusing their crews. This is the first bo...
• Buccaneers, 1620-1690
  Before the era of great pirates in the early 18th century, there was an even more bloodthirsty phase of attacks in the Caribbean known as the 'Buccaneering Era'. For over 50 years, English, French and Dutch buccaneers launched a series of devastating attacks on Spanish towns, ports and shipping. We...
• The Birkenhead Drill
  Learn about the Birkhead through this stirring collection of survivor accounts....
• The Bismarck Chase
  The sinking of the British battlecruiser HMS Hood by the Bismarck is re-examined using modern computer modeling techniques....
• The British Seaborne Empire
  Sea-power made the British Empire what it was: without sea-power there would have been no empire, or at least no empire in the form it actually took. In this masterful analysis of the role of the sea in the history of the British Empire, Jeremy Black follows in the tradition of classic works by C. ...
• The Buccaneer's Realm
  In 1674, it is three years since Henry Morgan's pirates sacked Panama. England is now at peace with Spain, and soon France, Holland, and Spain will briefly be at peace among themselves. But soon buccaneers and their French counterparts, the filibuste...
• Chicago Maritime
  This history of Chicago as freight handler to the nation chronicles the role of waterborne trade and transportation in building a metropolis on the swampland that the Illiwek once called Checagou. Illustrations along with tales of ships and storms paint a picture of life on Chicago's waterways....
• Civil War Adventures of a Blockade Runner
  William Watson spent two years evading Union gunboats and dealing with the sharpers who fed off the misfortune of the Civil War. In 1892, using log books, personal papers, and business memoranda, he published this plain, blunt, account of events just as they happened. The result was a classic adven...
• The Circumnavigators
  Packed with astonishing exploits and peopled with brave, daring, and sometimes foolhardy men and women from many nations, this entertaining and enlightening history of circumnavigation offers a stirring saga of quest and discovery, of adventure and achievement. Illustrated with pictures, charts, an...
• Door Peninsula Shipwrecks
  Door County is the final resting place of many shipwrecks, from the first Euro American ship to sail the western Great Lakes, LaSalle's fabled Griffin that left Washington Island in 1679 never to be heard of again, to modern-day pleasure crafts that find the shallow inlets and bays hard to navigate...
• Down East
  Lincoln Paine has laid down the framework for an understanding of Maine's maritime history by relating the population and land-scape of today to their historic foundations. From the first explorers, to the century of ships, to our modern fisheries and diversification, Maine's maritime story is told...
• Down to the Sea: The Fishing Schooners of Gloucester
• Eight Steamboats
  In the 1960s, an era of widespread social turbulence, the shipping industry in the Great Lakes was on the threshold of Immense change. Developed during World War II, the US merchant fleet faced threatening competition from the newer Canadian fleet. T...
• Fatal Forecast
  A true story of catastrophe and survival at sea, Fatal Forecast is a spellbinding moment-by-moment account of seventy-two hours in the lives of eightyoung fishermen, some of whom would never set foot on dry land again.On the morning of November 21, 1...
• Band of Brothers
  Band of Brothers is a history of the boy seaman rating in the Royal Navy, beginning with its evolution from the 18th century Officer's Servant through to its abolition in 1956. It tells of an astonishing Victorian Naval tradition which continued right into the modern age. HMS Ganges, a byword on th...
• 1914 Star to the Royal Navy and Royal Marines
• Pirates
  This book aims to portray an accurate picture of the pirates who sailed in the waters of the Caribbean and off the American coastline during the golden age of piracy and shows that the life of a pirate was nasty, brutish and short (with one or two notable exceptions). It traces the origins of pirat...
• The Lighthouse Encyclopedia
  Who was Augustine Fresnel? What is a clamshell lens? When was the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse moved inland? Where were screw-pile towers used? What is a daymark? Lighthouse lovers and anyone interested in maritime history will find the answers to these and hundreds of other questions in "The Lighthous...
• Wake of the Invercauld
  This is the story of Robert Holding, a young English adventurer who was only 23 when he was shipwrecked with 19 others on the Auckland Islands in the sub-Antarctic Ocean in 1864. A year later he was rescued, along with only two of his shipmates. The others had perished from starvation and exposure....
• The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea
  The most comprehensive and authoritative reference book of its kind, The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea is a completely revised and updated edition of a classic volume that was first published in 1976 to huge acclaim, hailed as 'a beguiling book' (Daily Telegraph), 'marvellous' (The Times), ...
• Salty Dog Talk
  Most of us never realise how many words and expressions used in everyday English have a nautical origin. This fascinating and charming pocket book explains the seafaring beginnings of over 200 such phrases - colourful, bizarre and surprising - and how they came ashore. Just a few examples are: Choc...
• Come Hell and High Water
  The drunken captain of an unseaworthy ferry who refuses to return to port in bad weather because he would have to refund the fares the naval captain who entrusts the navigation of his frigate to a passenger the crew who callously ignored freezing survivors on a dismasted wreck the passengers who se...
• Empire of Blue Water
  Henry Morgan, a twenty-year-old Welshman, arrived in the New World in 1655, hell-bent on making his fortune. Over the next three decades, his exploits in the Caribbean in the service of the English became legend. His daring attacks on the mighty Spanish Empire on land and sea changed the fates of k...
• Fatal Treasure
  'In real life-especially off the Florida coast-things can have fatal consequences. Fatal Treasure is a truly compelling read' - Aphrodite Jones, New York Times bestselling author of Cruel Sacrifice and All She Wanted. In 1622, hundreds of people lost their lives to the curse of the Spanish galleon ...
• Compass
  Compass chronicles the misadventures of those who attempted to perfect the magnetic compass - so precious to sixteenth-century seamen that, by law, any man found tampering with it had his hand pinned to the mast with a dagger. In this history of man's search for reliable navigation of treacherous s...
• The First Total War
  World War I has been called 'the war to end all wars', the first time combatants were mobilized on a massive scale to ruthlessly destroy an enemy. But as David A. Bell argues in this tour de force of interpretive history, the Great War was not, in fact, the first total war. For this, we need to tra...
• The History of Seafaring
  This is a large format, meticulously researched, lavishly illustrated and fully international history of mankind's seaborne voyages from the Phoenicians and Chinese to modern navies and round-the-world sailing yachts. Royal prestige, intellectual curiosity, commerce and territorial expansion all pr...
• Mayflower
  Bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick reveals the darker side of the Pilgrim fathers' settlement in the New World, which ultimately erupted in bloody battle some 50 years after they first landed on American soil. Behind the quaint and pious version of the Mayflower story usually taught in American...
• Sailing Alone Around the World
  First published in 1900, Joshua Slocum's autobiographical account of his solo trip around the world is one of the most remarkable — and entertaining — travel narratives of all time. Setting off alone from Boston aboard the thirty-six foot wooden sloop Spray in April 1895, Captain S...
• Beyond Capricorn
  Argues that in 1522 - a century before the Dutch and 250 years before Captain Cook - the Portuguese discovered and mapped parts of Australia and New Zealand. Draws from primary and secondary historical sources, archaeological evidence and stories handed down through Aboriginal oral tradition....
• Tracks in the Sea
  Tracks in the Sea captures a rich yet little-known chapter in the history of seafaring - the mapping of the oceans by Matthew Fontaine Maury, the father of modern navigation and ocean science. Voyages in the early 1800s were risky endeavors. Navigation was uncertain. Chronometers were a new technol...
• The ANTARCTIC JOURNAL of a Sailor on Operation Windmill 1947-48
  The book Antarctic Journal a Seaman's Record from 1947 contains the day-to-day observations of a young sailor assigned in 1947 to his first cruise, which was an historic expedition to map and study over twenty locations along the coast of Antarctica. Project Windmill was the first all-icebreaker ta...
• The Sea Wolf
  A band of brothers known as the Oathsworn, committed only to each other, feared by many, rises again, setting sail on the wolf sea in search of vengeance and glory. Washed up in a hostile city, battleweary and out of luck, the Oathsworn lie waiting for their reluctant leader, the young Orm, to bri...
• Breaking the Chains
  Dorothea Dix was almost forty years old when she discovered that people, especially poor people, with mental illness were confined in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens . chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience. Outraged by this knowledge, Dix led a forty-year crusade for the...
• The Last Schoonerman
  This is the page-turning story of a man who walked out of college, went to sea, and lived life on his own terms. From the 1920s until the 1980s, Captain Kenedy mastered ships delivering cargo while supporting a family and doing what was necessary as he sailed up and down the eastern seaboard of Nor...
• Leviathan
  A cornerstone of modern western philosophy, addressing the role of man in government, society and religion In 1651, Hobbes published his work about the relationship between the government and the individual. More than four centuries old, this brilliant yet ruthless book analyzes not only the bas...
• Cockatoo Island
  John Jeremy pays tribute to Sydney Harbour's largest and by far most fascinating island in this new edition of Cockatoo Island: Sydneys Historic Dockyard. The book focuses on the industrial history of Cockatoo Island and is the most detailed account of the dockyard, its administration and activitie...
• Lost At Sea
  Thirteen year old Josh McCullen expects an adventure when he joins his eleven friends on a boating trip along the pacific coast, but he never anticipates being Lost at Sea. In the midst of their trip, the boys are caught in a storm that blows them away from the shore-and now they have no idea which...
• Shipwreck!
  The discovery of shipwrecks has unveiled the remarkable stories behind the vessels and the lives of the people that sailed on them. Some, however, are shrouded in mystery, never having been raised from the depths of the sea: Henry VIII's flagship the Mary Rose, now on display in Portsmouth, offers ...
• Viking
  Step into the world of the Vikings! Make a Jarls helmet, write your name in runes, dye material just as they did 1000 years ago, drink Viking apple juice, play the board game hnef-tafl, and mold a good-luck charm. Fascinating facts and thirteen easy-to-do activities involve young readers in explori...
• The Endurance
  Intrigued by the mysterious, vast continent at the bottom of the world, Sir Ernest Shackleton fearlessly led 27 men to explore Antarctica -- but on their way to its shore, their ship Endurance was crushed by the relentless ice! The shipwrecked team braved many months stranded on an ice floe (throug...
• Titanic
  Unfold a spectacular 3-D model of the TITANIC -- and read about her fateful rise and fall -- in a gorgeous gift set including several novelty features. On April 14, 1912, the largest and finest ocean liner of the age struck an iceberg and sank to the icy depths. Now you can discover all the glory...
• Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts
  From the very beginnings, America has been a fertile hunting ground for high seas rogues willing to take what they wanted when they found it. Even great men like Christopher Columbus and Sir Francis Drake took a turn as sea robbers. In later years, names like Blackbeard, Low, Bonnet and Kidd struck...
• Real Pirates
  There's mystery in her history there's gold within her hold... This vivid picture book takes readers through the swashbuckling tale of the Whydah, One of the most advanced sailing ships of the early 18th-century when she first set sail from London in late 1716, this vessel brought adventure, weal...
• Sailing with Flinders
  On the 18th July 1801 a young man from Manchester by the name of Samuel Smith set sail for Terra Australis. His journal, published here for the first time, gives an invaluable 'history from below the decks' account of the voyage which gave Australia its shape and name....
• Ships
  Today the small wooden ships called caravels would hardly be noticed in a port full of modern sailing vessels. But in their day, they were a technological triumph - the space shuttles of the fifteenth century. The creation of the caravel, a ship ideally suited to the uncertainties of coastal explor...
• The Indian Ocean
  The Indian Ocean, used and travelled by humans for over 5000 years, is by far the 'oldest' sea in history. In this stimulating and authoritative overview, Michael Pearson reverses the traditional angle of maritime history and looks from the sea to its shores - its impact on the land throu...
• Way of the Pirate
  A true treasure trove of maritime history, The Way of the Pirate is a fascinating account of the men, women, kings and countries that aided, supported, hunted and condemned the most romantic of adventurers in maritime history. It contains a fascinating and full account of the life and times as well...
• Ferries of Puget Sound
  Ferryboats have been a way of life on Puget Sound since settlers first arrived there. From the wooden Mosquito Fleet to the sleek art deco Kalakala, the ferries of Puget Sound serve as a cultural icon to visitors and locals alike. Running from Point Defiance to Sidney, British Columbia, the Washing...
• The Pendleton Disaster Off Cape Cod
  On February 18, 1952, four Coast Guardsmen set out from Station Chatham in a thirty-six-foot motor lifeboat to locate the mortally wounded T2 tanker Pendleton and rescue its crew during a Nor'easter. All four men knew the odds of finding the Pendleton and surviving the storm were slim. Whether by a...
• The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783
  First published over a century ago, this classic text on the history and tactics of naval warfare had a profound effect on the training of officers and the deployment of naval resources around the globe. It continues to be a primary reference for naval students and historians. The book presents the...
• Viking Longship
  This title charts the development of the Viking longship, tracing its evolution from the one-man canoe of the Scandinavian Stone Age, through the 'clinker' or wood -built-ships of 200 BC into the recognisable longboats of the 4th century AD. From this point onwards, the Viking Longship developed in...
• A History of the Vikings
  'An utterly splendid book, quite the most brilliantly written, balanced, and explanative general work on the Vikings ever to appear in English or in any language.' Scandinavian Studies The subject of this book is the Viking realms, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, their civilization and culture, and th...
• Shackleton's Boat Journey
  Captain Worsley offers a firsthand account of his incredible Antarctic adventure--the astounding and inspiring true story behind the forthcoming Wolfgang Petersen film, "Endurance". On its way to the Antarctic continent in 1915, the Endurance became trapped and then crushed by ice, stranding ship's...
• Rescue at the Top of the World
  - Meticulously recreated from century-old journals - The greatest Arctic rescue story in history...
• Ferries on San Francisco Bay
  Decades before San Francisco Bay was crisscrossed by bridges, an extensive network of ferries plied these green waters, moving passengers, vehicles, and freight between San Francisco, Alameda, Marin, Solano, Sonoma, and Contra Costa Counties. Very few of the ferries survive today, but at one time, ...
• Ghost Stories of the Sea
  Many who die at sea soon return as ghosts and eerie premonitions that enrich the seas unparalleled mystery. The high seas are sinister places with often tragic results....
• Graveyard of the Atlantic
  'A thrilling record of storm and stress, of cruel seas and shifting sands, of broken ships, tragedy and gallantry is set down in this book... David Stick, who lives on the outer banks, captures the spirit of this treacherous coast. He has done a majo...
• A Hanging Offense
  Mutiny on the Bounty is one of history's greatest naval stories -- yet few know the similar tale from America's own fledgling navy in the dying days of the Age of Sail, a tale of mutiny and death at sea on an American warship. In 1842, the brig-of-war Somers set out on a training cruise for appr...
• Historic Maritime Maps
  This book presents a selection of ocean-going charts dating from the 13th century to the 17th century. While they may be rudimentary, they bear excellent witness to the achievements of early European navigators, and to their determination to explore the ends of the Earth. What the charts may lack i...
• History of the Ship
  A commanding view from the bridge, with more than 250 color and black-and-white illustrations, covering the complete history of seafaring....
• The History of Pirates
  Piracy flourished in the early 18th century, producing many of the buccaneers whose legendary names have gripped our imaginations: Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, and Bartholomew Roberts, to name a few. Yet piracy on the high seas existed long before Blackbeard's name struck terror in the hearts of ...
• The Hole
  In September 1994, the passenger ferry Estonia set out on an overnight cruise from Tallinn, Estonia to Stockholm, Sweden and sank in the Baltic Sea, killing nearly 1000 people in 35 minutes. It was the worst peacetime sea catastrophe in European waters in the 20th century. A controversial governmen...
• Industrializing American Shipbuilding
  Throughout the 19th century, the shipbuilding industry in America was both art and craft, one based on tradition, instinct, hand tools, and handmade ship models. Even as mechanization was introduced, the trade supported a system of apprenticeship, ma...
• Journey to Titanic
• The Jail That Went to Sea
  In 1941, the British people had their backs to the wall in their lone fight against the might of Hitler's Germany. America was neutral, at least until the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Glasgow became the starting point for one of the most amazing and, until now, untold episodes of the War. Government of...
• The Lifeboats Story
  The RNLI is one of the best known maritime rescue organisations in the world. It receives no financial support from the British government and is supported entirely by public donations. Edward Wake-Walker, the RNLI's former director of public relations, tells the story of the Institution from its b...
• The Lighthouses of Rhode Island
  The definitive series on the history of New England lighthouses continues with Rhode Island's thirty beacons. Here are just a few of the fascinating entries compiled by D'Entremont, New England's foremost lighthouse authority: A feud between two keepers at Whale Rock Light led to a harrowing life-a...
• The Long Ships Passing
• The Longest Voyage
  Robert Silverberg's The Longest Voyage captures the drama and danger and personalities in the colorful story of the first voyages around the world. In only a century, circumnavigators in small ships charted the coast of the New World and explored the Pacific. Characterized by fierce nationalism, co...
• Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind
• Mighty Fitz
  Thirty years after the most legendary shipwreck on America's inland waters. Michael Schumacher examines the productive life and untimely demise of the Edmund Fitzgerald, The disappearance of the Edmund Fitzgerald remains one of the great unsolved mysteries in maritime history. The specifics of what...
• Mutiny
  It is 1797 and Thomas Kydd is now master's mate on Achilles, a 64-gun ship-of-the-line, on his way back from the Caribbean. After a dangerous rescue mission to Venice, Kydd sails for England, but his joy at returning home after many years' absence is soon forgotten when he finds himself at the cent...
• Naval Ceremonies, Customs and Traditions
  First published in 1934, this book has enjoyed a reputation both as an authoritative guide to conduct in a contemporary maritime setting and a fascinating historical reference on the ways of the sea and sailor going back to the earliest days of sail. Now updated to cover all the sea services, this ...
• New Jersey Coast Guard Stations and Rumrunners
  With its many inlets, points, and coves, the coast of New Jersey stood out as a haven for rumrunners brazenly thumbing their nose at the federal government during Prohibition. New Jersey was also recognized as the birthplace of the federal government's shore-based units of the United States Coast G...
• The Old Merchant Marine
  The story of American ships and sailors is an epic of blue water which seems singularly remote, almost unreal, to the later generations. Vanished fleets and brave memories-a chronicle of America which had written its closing chapters before the Civil War! There will be other Yankee merchantmen in t...
• Pirate of the Far East
  For many centuries, international relations between Medieval Japan, Korea and China were carried out by means of the 'inseparable trinity' of war, trade and piracy. Much has been written about the first two means of interaction. The third element, which combined the other two in a violent blend of ...
• Pirate Ship 1660-1730
  Although pirates have a fascination which has resulted in the production of numerous books and documentaries in recent years (including titles by Osprey), no detailed depiction of their ships has ever been produced. Following the success of the Elite Series Pirates title, this book will provide a d...
• Pirates and the Lost Templar Fleet
  Childress takes us into the fascinating world of maverick sea captains who were Knights Templars and later Scottish Rite Free Masons who battled the Vatican and the Spanish and Italian ships that sailed for the Pope. This Lost Templar Fleet was originally based at La Rochelle in southern France but...
• Pirates of the North Atlantic
  In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and even nineteenth centuries, the North Atlantic Ocean was an extremely attractive place to pirates. In these waters, pirate crews could ambush Spanish ships filled with gold and Newfoundland ships filled with salted fish and hide fugitive ships in isolated coves, s...
• Pride of the Sea
  The breathtaking adventure tale in the tradition of The Perfect Storm and In The Heart of the Sea that recounts the harrowing story of the survivors of The Pride of Baltimore. Just before noon on a warm morning in May 1986, an unexpected storm rumble...
• Real Caribbean Pirates
  After the Spanish conquest of the Americas and word of the immense wealth flowing out of the New World reached Europe, high seas piracy became the scourge of ocean-going vessels. This bookincludes some of the exciting and villainous tales of these adventures of the high seas....
• Rounding the Horn
  Fifty-five degrees 59 minutes South by 67 degrees 16 minutes West: Cape Horna buttressed pyramid of crumbly rock situated at the very bottom of South Americais a place of forlorn and foreboding beauty that has captured the dark imaginations of explorers and writers from Francis Drake to Joseph Conr...
• Schooner Passage
  Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, schooner trade was a well-developed system of maritime transport for commodities such as grain, lumber, and iron. The schooner trade was as critical to the development of the Great Lakes region as covered wagons were to the Far West and paddl...
• Sea Charts of the British Isles
  Sea Charts of the British Isles takes the reader on a circumnavigation of 'these sceptred isles', as Shakespeare referred to them, to explore, through the chart, this multitude of sea ports, fishing and commercial harbours, naval bases and dockyards, and sea-side havens that have supported local li...
• Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates in the Middle Ages
  The first sailors braved the North Sea and the Baltic in open wooden boats: their aims were varied - to fish, to trade, to conquer and plunder. Without maps or compasses, they steered by the sun or by landmarks on the coast. Nevertheless they discovered Iceland and North America and explored the ri...
• Serpent's Coil
  The Serpent's Coil recounts the amazing story of the Liberty ship Leicester, which sailed for New York from England in the summer of 1948, ran into a hurricane (with the loss of six lives), and was abandoned in the mid-Atlantic. It also tells of the deep-sea tug, the Foundation Josephine, which tra...