Maritime History & Piracy

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 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....

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....

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.

Between 1606 and 1688, while the British had their hands full with the Gunpowder Plot and the English Civil War, it was highly skilled Dutch seafarers who mapped the land masses....

Celebrated historian Diana Preston presents betrayals, escapes, and survival at sea in her account of the mutiny of the Bounty and the flight of convicts from the Australian penal colony....

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

The history of the Golden Age of Piracy, the one that has shaped the modern conception of a pirate, is complex and long, with lots of information to cover....

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

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....

On a frigid April night in 1912, the world’s largest—and soon most famous—ocean liner struck an iceberg and slipped beneath the waves. She had scarcely disappeared before her new journey began, a seemingly limitless odyssey through the world’s fixation with her every tragic detail...

The Shipwreck Hunter chronicles David L. Mearns' most intriguing finds. It describes the extraordinary techniques used, the detailed research, and the courage required to find a wreck thousands of feet beneath the sea, plus the moving human stories that lie behind these tragedies....

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....

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....

A brilliant telling of the history of the common seaman in the age of sail and his role in Britain's trade, exploration, and warfare....

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....

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....

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....

No one present at the Battle of Cape Lopez off the coast of West Africa in 1722 could have known that they were on the edge of history. This obscure yet fierce naval battle would have a monumental impact on British colonies and the future of slavery in America.

In the grand tradition of David McCullough and Ron Chernow, the sweeping story of the 19th-century American dynasties who battled for dominance of the tea and opium trades....

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....

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...

The dramatic biography of a slaveship turned freedom-fighter-which brings new insights into Britain's involvement in the end of the trade in enslaved people.

Admiral Stavridis, a leader in military and national security circles, shares his love of the sea and some of the sources of that affection. The Sailor's Bookshelf offers synopses of fifty books that illustrate the history, importance, lore, and lifestyle of the oceans....