Maritime History & Piracy

On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell....

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.

The mutiny on HMS Bounty, in the South Pacific on 28 April 1789, is one of history's truly great stories - a tale of human drama, intrigue and adventure of the highest order - and in the hands of Peter FitzSimons it comes to life as never before. Commissioned by the Royal Navy to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti and take them to the West Indies, the Bounty's crew found themselves in a tropical paradise. Five months later, they did not want to leave.

The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth....

Driven by a passion for travel and history and a love of ships and the sea, former Monty Python stalwart and beloved television globe-trotter Michael Palin explores the world of HMS Erebus, last seen on an ill-fated voyage to chart the Northwest Passage....

On the night of 14/15 April 1912, a supposedly unsinkable ship, the largest and most luxurious vessel in the world at the time, collided with an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage. Of the 2,208 people on board, only 712 were saved. The rest either drowned or froze to death.

The year is 1680, in the heart of the Golden Age of Piracy, and more than 300 daring, hardened pirates—a potent mix of low-life scallywags and a rare breed of gentlemen buccaneers—gather on a remote Caribbean island....

It is impossible to understand our world today without understanding the last 100 years of Middle Eastern history. The history of the region in the 20th century is so varied and complex that it defies easy explanations....

On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis is sailing alone in the Philippine Sea when she is sunk by two Japanese torpedoes. For the next five nights, almost 300 miles from the nearest land, nearly 900 men battle injuries, sharks, dehydration, insanity, and eventually each other....

Finding and identifying a pirate ship is the hardest thing to do under the sea. But two men—John Chatterton and John Mattera—are willing to risk everything to find the Golden Fleece, the ship of the infamous pirate Joseph Bannister....

In this grand and thrilling narrative, the acclaimed biographer of Magellan, Columbus, and Marco Polo brings alive the singular life and adventures of Sir Francis Drake, the pirate/explorer/admiral whose mastery of the seas during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I changed....

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Ghost Map and Extra Life, the story of a pirate who changed the world....

What was daily life in Nelson's navy really like, for everyone from the captain down to the rawest recruit? What did they eat? What songs did they sing? What was the schedule of watches? How were the officers and crew paid, and what was the division of prize-money? Find out....

The growth of piracy led to a major surge in attacks in the Caribbean and along North America’s Atlantic seaboard. With the fragile maritime economy of the Americas threatened with collapse, major ports were threatened and trade brought to a standstill, the British government finally declared war.

The true, harrowing story of the ill-fated 1913 Canadian Arctic Expedition and the two men who came to define it....

Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies....

More than two centuries after Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian led a mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh on a small, armed transport vessel called Bounty, the true story of this enthralling adventure has become obscured by the legend....

Command of the oceans was crucial to winning World War II. In this definitive account, Evan Mawdsley traces events at sea from the first U-boat operations in 1939 to the surrender of Japan....

The legendary explorer of the Titanic shares inside stories of danger, suspense, and discovery - plus previously untold stories about his own dyslexia and how it has shaped his life....

Ocean is a story that begins with the formation of the mid-Atlantic ridge some 200 million years ago and ends with the Castilian conquest of the Canary Islands in the fifteenth century, providing a template for the methods used by the Spanish in their colonization of the New World.

A century before Britain became involved in this terrible business, whole villages and towns in England, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and other European countries were being depopulated by slavers, who transported the men, women, and children to Africa, where they were sold....

On October 1, 2015, Hurricane Joaquin barreled into the Bermuda Triangle and swallowed the container ship El Faro whole, resulting in the worst American shipping disaster in 35 years....

As he explodes many accepted pirate myths (i.e. "walking the plank" is pure fiction), Cordingly replaces them with a truth that is more complex and often bloodier....

This book not only retells the story of the battle from both a British and German perspective based on the latest research, but also helps clarify the context of Germany's inevitable naval clash and the aftermath after the smoke had cleared....

Matthew Pearl unveils the unbelievable true story of a real-life Swiss Family Robinson (and their dog) who faced sharks, shipwreck, and betrayal.

The Olympic Class ships were intended to be the greatest liners to ever sail the oceans, but the Britannic sank only four years after her sister ship the Titanic. While the wreck of the Titanic is two miles below the surface and rapidly deteriorating, the Britannic is much more accessible (only 400 ft down) and remains largely intact. One of the largest passenger ships ever to have sunk, her wreck presents a unique opportunity to explore the interior of the Olympic Class liners, and examine areas which on the Titanic simply no longer exist.

HARD AGROUND is more than the story of a racing yacht running aground in the vast, merciless expanse of the Indian Ocean. It is a deep dive into the collision between human ambition and the untamable sea — where cutting-edge technology meets the raw, unpredictable power of nature. In the 2014–15 Volvo Ocean Race, the Vestas Wind was a sleek, cutting-edge machine, helmed by some of the world’s most skilled sailors. Yet, despite every precaution, the boat ran hard aground on a hidden reef — a navigational nightmare that exposed the brittle underbelly of modern offshore racing. With ...

Golden Globe Race 2018-19: The Long Way Without GPS is not merely a chronicle of a race. It is a meditation on the human spirit tested by the sea—the kind of test that strips away comfort, technology, and pretense, and leaves only the sailor, the boat, and the long, unrelenting ocean. In 2018, fifty years after the original Golden Globe Race first dared men to sail alone, non-stop, around the world, a new generation of sailors answered the same call. But this was no modern regatta. There were no satellites, no GPS, no weather routing. The rules were spartan. The solitude, absolute. These ...

In 1870, a man took a bet. He said he could sail a twenty-foot yawl across the Atlantic. East to west. The hard way. Most men would have laughed. He didn’t. He just went. The Ocean Wager tells the true story of Captain Nikola Primorac, a quiet sailor from Dubrovnik who risked everything to cross the sea in a boat smaller than most lifeboats. No engine. No charts worth trusting. No backup. Just sails, salt, and the will to endure. This is not a tale of glory. There are no parades here. No medals. Just storms and silence. Just two men and a dog, soaked and half-mad, crawling across a grey ...

For centuries, the very idea of a navigable sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the treacherous, ice-bound waters north of the American continent has captivated the human spirit. The Search For The Northwest Passage chronicles this extraordinary and multifaceted quest, guiding readers through a story that is at once a tale to heroic ambition and a stark reminder of nature's unforgiving power. This comprehensive history delves into the origins of the search, exploring the powerful economic and political forces that first propelled explorers into the unknown. Witness ...