Maritime History

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.

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.

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—vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of the European empire.

Captain Kidd was one of the most notorious pirates to ever prowl the seas. But few know that Kidd had an accomplice, a behind-the-scenes player who enabled his plundering and helped him outpace his enemies. That accomplice was his wife, Sarah Kidd, a well-to-do woman whose extraordinary life is a lesson in reinvention and resourcefulness. Twice widowed by twenty-one and operating within the strictures of polite society in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New York, Sarah secretly aided and abetted her husband, fighting alongside him against his accusers.

We think we know the story of the Titanic—the once majestic and supposedly unsinkable ship that struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Britain to America—but very little has been written about the vessel’s 705 survivors. How did the events of that horrific night in the icy waters of the North Atlantic affect the lives of those who lived to tell the tale? Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished letters, memoirs, diaries, and interviews with their family members, award-winning journalist Andrew Wilson brings to life the survivors’ colorful voices.

Experience the Adventures of the Most Fearless Female Buccaneers in History! QUEENS OF THE HIGH SEAS is a captivating anthology of history's most daring and influential female pirates. This collection of legendary tales brings to light the often-overlooked stories of women who not only survived but thrived in the male-dominated world of piracy. From the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, this book spans the globe, uncovering the lives and exploits of fearsome women like Queen Artemisia of Caria, the first female pirate known to history, and the unyielding reign of Ching Shih, mistress of the ...

The ship 'General Carleton' was built in Whitby in 1777 and sank off the coast of Poland in 1785. When she was excavated in the 1990s a wide range of artefacts were recovered many of which, due to being coated in tar from the ship's cargo, were in a remarkable state of preservation - most notably a unique collection of sailors' clothing. It is because of the picture these objects give us about life, both aboard and ashore, for 18th-century mariners from Whitby and other coastal towns in the North-East, that 'General Carleton' has been called the 'Yorkshire Mary Rose'. This book is the story...

Henry Avery of Devon pillaged a fortune from a Mughal ship off the coast of India and then vanished into thin air—and into legend. More ballads, plays, biographies and books were written about Avery’s adventures than any other pirate. His contemporaries crowned him "the pirate king" for pulling off the richest heist in pirate history and escaping with his head intact (unlike Blackbeard and his infamous Flying Gang). Avery was now the most wanted criminal on earth. To the authorities, Avery was the enemy of all mankind. To the people he was a hero.

The Royal Navy to which Admiral Lord Nelson sacrificed his life depended on thousands of sailors and marines to man the great wind-powered wooden warships. Drawn from all over Britain and beyond, often unwillingly, these ordinary men made the navy invincible through skill, courage and sheer determination.

Captain Thuridur, born in Iceland in 1777, lived a life that was both controversial and unconventional. Her first time fishing, on the open unprotected rowboats of her time, was at age eleven. Soon after, she audaciously began wearing trousers. She later became an acclaimed fishing captain brilliant at weather-reading and seacraft and consistently brought in the largest catches. In the Arctic seas where drownings occurred with terrifying regularity, she never lost a single crewmember. Author Margaret Willson reveals Captain Thuridur's fascinating story.

A breathtaking thriller, employing both history and mystery, capturing the attention of the reader from the first to the last page and which illuminating the darkest scenarios of the history of Christianity and Judaism. A novel about men ready to do anything, interested not in the truths of their faith, but in protecting some of the greatest mysteries of humanity. What is the Ark of the Covenant, really? What is hidden inside? Who was Moses, really? What if, despite the millennial tradition of the Promised Land, Moses had been no one other than a warrior in search of the power and fame he ...

Villains of All Nations explores the "Golden Age" of Atlantic piracy (1716-1726) and the infamous generation whose images underlie our modern, romanticized view of pirates.

When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, America faced a crisis. The new nation was deeply in debt and needed its economy to grow quickly, but its merchant ships were under attack. Pirates from North Africa's Barbary coast routinely captured American sailors and held them as slaves, demanding ransom and tribute payments far beyond what the new country could afford.

Battle of the Arctic is a wonderfully evocative history and largely unknown saga of World War II. As the Soviet Union played its role in the conflict, Ally convoys from Britain, the United States, and Iceland fought to deliver essential supplies to Russia. In a clash of extreme elements—as well as fierce Axis opposition—the effort demonstrated an unparalleled commitment from Allied nations to supporting the Soviet Union.

In October 1902, the barque Veronica set sail from Ship Island, Biloxi, Mississippi, on what proved to be her last voyage. Carrying a cargo of pitchpine and a crew of twelve men, the ship never reached her intended destination, Montevideo. Tensions among the mixed crew and officers on board quickly built up, culminating in mutiny and disaster in mid Atlantic. "Blood on the ocean" is the first full-length account, based on extensive research, dealing with this strange and unsolved maritime mystery. It is an exciting story, bringing back to life the last days of the big sailing ships and the ...

On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment? Hampton Sides' account of Cook's last journey both wrestles with Cook's legacy and provides a narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterised exploration in the 1700s.

For centuries, oceans were the chessboard on which empires battled for supremacy. But in the nuclear age, air power and missile systems dominated our worries about security, and for the United States, the economy was largely driven by domestic production, with trucking and railways that crisscrossed the continent serving as the primary modes of commercial transit.

A documentary drawn from testimony at the Coast Guard’s official inquiry looks anew at one of the most storied, and mysterious, shipwrecks in American history. The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald is one of the most famous shipwreck stories in Great Lakes history. It is also one of maritime lore’s great mysteries, the details of its disappearance as obscure now as on that fateful November day in 1975.

In 1768 Captain James Cook and his crew set out on a small British naval vessel in search of a missing continent. 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of that voyage, and Cook's 'discovery' of Australia. Captain Cook's Epic Voyage reveals the hardships and adventure of this remarkable quest, and the euphoria of discovering new lands.

A Brief Guide to Maritime Strategy is a deliberately compact introductory work aimed at junior seafarers, those who make decisions affecting the sea services, and those who educate seafarers and decision-makers. It introduces listeners to the main theoretical ideas that shape how statesmen and commanders make and execute maritime strategy in times of peace and war.