Ship History

In 2007 the Windjammer Company, at one time the world’s largest sailing ship company, collapsed and millions in paid customer’s funds disappeared. Created by Mike Burke in 1947, the windjammer company, also known as ‘Burke’s Navy, was a rough recruit of mismatched sailors and once derelict sailing ships, all of whom Burke gave another chance. When he was asked to investigate the strange demise of the Windjammer Company back in 2009, the writer was immediately drawn into the world of corporate intrigue and sibling rivalry. In Capturing the Last American Pirates, the author has ...

Sprawling across the Pacific, this untold story follows the crew of the newly-built "vengeance ship" USS Astoria, named for her sunken predecessor lost earlier in the war. At its center lies US Navy Captain George Dyer, who vowed to return to action after suffering a horrific wound. He accepted the ship's command in 1944, knowing it would be his last chance to avenge his injuries and salvage his career. Yet with the nation's resources and personnel stretched thin by the war, he found that just getting the ship into action would prove to be a battle.

Built in 1927, the German ocean liner Cap Arcona was the greatest ship since the Titanic. When the Nazis seized control, she was stripped down for use as a floating barracks and troop transport. Hitler's minister, Joseph Goebbels, later cast her as a "star" in the epic propaganda film about the sinking of the legendary Titanic. In the Third Reich's final desperate days, when SS Cap Arcona was mistakenly bombed by the British Air Force, concentration camp prisoners packed the ship.

Imagine opening a chamber to discover an antique violin, a yellowed boarding pass, and a tattered coat. Together these artifacts can be used to tell of the splendor of the luxury ship Titanic and its tragic sinking in 1912. Featuring primary sources, this Time Capsule History book explores one of history's most fascinating events through the high-interest vehicle of a time capsule. Open it up to discover Titanic!

Little Sophie vanished - where did she go? For 100 years nobody knows. Her photo and an antique perfume bottle long hidden in the fireplace of an old house. Story of a family over 170 years. Finally, we discover what really happened. Set in historic Balmain on beautiful Sydney Harbour. Imagined history of early Australia to the present day

The most feared ship in Britain’s West Africa Squadron, His Majesty’s brig Black Joke was one of a handful of ships tasked with patrolling the western coast of Africa in an effort to end hundreds of years of global slave trading. Sailing after the spectacular fall of Napoleon in France, yet before the rise of Queen Victoria’s England, Black Joke was first a slaving vessel itself, and one with a lightning-fast reputation; only a lucky capture in 1827 allowed it to be repurposed by the Royal Navy to catch its former compatriots.

On December 13, 1944, POW Estel Myers was herded aboard the Japanese prison ship, the Oryoku Maru, with more than 1,600 other American captives. More than 1,100 of them would be dead by journey's end... The son of a Kentucky sharecropper and an enlistee in the Navy's medical corps, Myers arrived in Manilla shortly before the bombings of Pearl Harbor and the other six targets of the Imperial Japanese military.

For more than 200 years, the wreck of the Whydah (and the riches that went down with it) eluded treasure seekers, until the ship was finally found in 1984 by marine archaeologists. The artifacts brought up from the ocean floor are priceless, both in value and in the picture they reveal of life in that much-mythologized era, changing much of what we know about pirates.

At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, the Royal Mail Steamer Titanic, the largest passenger steamship of this time, met its catastrophic end after crashing into an iceberg. Of the 2,240 passengers and crew onboard, only 705 survived. More than 100 years later, today's listeners will be intrigued by the mystery that surrounds this ship that was originally labeled "unsinkable".

The sinking of the submarine S-51 was one of the greatest tragedies in American naval history. Due to a miscommunication and subsequent collision between the sub and a passing steamship on a September night, the S-51, including 33 of its crew of 36, sank to the ocean depths. The tragedy of the S-51 captivated the nation, and was a fixture in the pages of American newspapers. The story took on a whole new dimension when the navy decided to take over the salvage of the 1,000-ton behemoth from a civilian company.

What's more exciting that spaceships and astronauts? How about a spaceship carrying the first astronauts ever to see the moon first-hand - on Christmas! The year was 1968, and the American people were still reeling from the spacecraft fire that killed the Apollo 1 crew a year earlier. On top of that, there were rumors that the Russian cosmonauts were getting ready to fly around the moon. NASA realized that they needed to take a bold step - and that they needed to take it now.

Talut Forest is a lumberjack on Terra Nova, where life thrives in the crowns of trees twenty kilometers high. After a mistake at work costs him his job, Talut has no choice but to sign up for a suicide mission. The aim of the mission? To investigate an artifact on the unexplored surface, where deep darkness reigns. But when the mission spirals into chaos from the start, Talut's fight to see his family again turns into a battle for the fate of the entire human race.

Naval combat underwent a significant metamorphosis during World War II. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan launched some of the most powerful battleships ever to sail the world's oceans, yet the conflict witnessed the emergence and triumph of the aircraft carrier as the 20th century's true monarch of the seas. Submarine warfare expanded and developed while aircraft technology and doctrine experienced several revolutionary changes due to the unforgiving demands of the new combat environment.

In the summer of 1860, more than 50 years after the United States legally abolished the international slave trade, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were brought ashore in Alabama under cover of night. They were the last recorded group of Africans deported to the United States as slaves. This book reconstructs the lives of the people in West Africa, recounts their capture and passage in the slave pen in Ouidah, and describes their experience of slavery alongside American-born enslaved men and women.

From a Bronze Age ship built during the age of Queen Nefertiti, a Viking warship made for King Cnut himself, Henry VIII's spectacular Mary Rose and the golden age of the Tudor court, to the exploration of the Arctic, the tragic story of HMS Terror and tales of bravery and endurance aboard HMS Gairsoppa in World War Two, these are the stories of some of the greatest underwater discoveries of all time. A rich and exciting narrative, this is not just the story of those ships and the people who sailed on them, the cargo and treasure they carried and their tragic fate.

The Bismark was the greatest warship ever built, with guns so powerful and accurate it could destroy an enemy ship while safely staying outside the line of fire. But the Allies had to sink it...or risk losing the war. William Shirer, famed World War II correspondent and author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, captures every suspenseful moment of the perilous mission.

An epic account of how the Royal Navy tracked down, cornered, and sank one of the most fearsome German warships of the Second World War.

Perfect for curious young listeners, these eight titles provide exciting details about notable tragedies throughout history. Learn about the impact of catastrophes like the Titanic, Pompeii, the San Francisco Earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, the Hindenburg, the Great Chicago Fire, and Pearl Harbor in this complete collection of iconic historical moments. With an easy-to-listen-to narrative in each book, listeners will be able to quickly learn about the shock and aftermath of these disasters.

Building a spaceship that uses Nicola Tesla's revolutionary space drive is only the beginning. From a new industrial revolution to the brink of global war, restless humanity presses onward, eventually to the first contact with an alien species.

It has been more than one hundred years since the RMS Titanic sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic ocean. The disaster has captivated history buffs and non-history buffs alike, and it is easy to see why. Some of the most illustrious people of the day were on board: some survived, and some did not. Legends abound about whether the ship's maiden voyage was cursed. And then there is the ship itself: arguably the most luxurious vessel to ever travel oversea.