Showing titles in Ships & Shipbuilding

The lives and adventures of some of history's most prominent Pirate Captains. This volume relates their plundering and murdering as well as the method and way they met their end.

When war broke out in Europe in August 1914, the new German luxury ocean liner SS Vaterland was interned in New York Harbor, where it remained docked for nearly three years - until the United States officially entered the fight to turn the tide of the war. Seized by authorities for the US Navy once war was declared in April 1917, the liner was renamed the USS Leviathan by President Woodrow Wilson and converted into an armed troop carrier.

When the terrorist attacks struck New York City on September 11, 2001, boat operators and waterfront workers quickly realized that they had the skills, the equipment, and the opportunity to take definite, immediate action in responding to the most significant destructive event in the United States in decades. For many of them, they were “doing what needed to be done”. American Dunkirk shows how people, many of whom were volunteers, mobilized rescue efforts in various improvised and spontaneous ways on that fateful date.

The story of the clipper ships, and the tens of thousands of migrants they brought to the Australian colony of the 19th century, is one of the world's great migration stories. For anyone who travelled to Australia before 1850, it was a long and arduous journey that could take as much as four months. With the arrival of the clipper ships, and favourable winds, the journey from England could be done in a little over half this time.

Do you know how many miles beneath the surface of the waves the wreck of the Titanic lies? What do scientists and historians now believe led to the iceberg being seen only at the last minute? The flares that were sent up by the crew were supposed to signal ‘distress’ - but what did they actually say? Narrator Kent Harris talks us through over 100 amazing Titanic facts in this fascinating audiobook about the famous ship and her tragic maiden voyage.

Was it the captain's fault, as many said? Or did the company, the Coast Guard, and the American Bureau of Shipping all have a hand on the helm of the SS El Faro as she steered too close to Hurricane Joaquin? This is an examination of a tragedy that has been well-researched and investigated - heroically so at times - by the United States Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board. My main goal here is to show how the SS El Faro fit into a larger system and culture - one that I have been covering off and on as a journalist and author for 38 years.

A collection of assorted martime non-fiction stories and articles written by Robert R. Frump between 1980 and 2008, spanning the years in which he was a newspaperman, wrote for magazines and authored books. The topics range from modern-day mutinies, to the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga to the Ports of Philadelphia to high sea rescues and disasters.

On a cold, cloudy day in early February 1985, Shelley Wachsmann, then resident nautical archaeologist for the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums, drove to Kibbutz Ginosar, an agricultural settlement near the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Two brothers, avid amateur archaeologists, had found a boat buried in the lake, its outlines revealed by receding lake waters. The boat was "possibly ancient," according to the handwritten note placed on Wachsmann's desk a day or two before.

Submarine drama, maritime tragedy, innovation, unique circumstances, resilience in adversity, leadership, teamwork, wisdom and personal growth-this book has it all. In May 1921 the submarine R-14 departs Pearl Harbor on an emergency mission to search for the US navy ship Conestoga, lost at sea with 56 souls aboard. But in a harsh twist of fate, the rescuers themselves fall into peril, stranded 140 miles from the nearest port with no fuel. Now young Annapolis grad Alexander "Dean" Douglas, the submarine's Acting CO, must rally his tired and discouraged crew to return safely to port. In a ...

Around the time of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, the U.S.-flagged merchant ship S.S. Del Oro departs Tacoma, Wash. bound for ports in Central and South America. Some unmarked crates in one of the holds are to be delivered to the Del Oro's first stop after the U.S.: Nicaragua. The narrator, Oiler on the 8-12 watch in the engine room, had promised to smuggle a parrot from South America back to his girlfriend in Seattle, risking prison to impress a beautiful woman. Against a backdrop of the collapsing dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, read how a merchant seaman combs ...

For centuries, ships' commanders kept journals that recorded their missions. These included voyages of discovery to unknown lands, engagements in war and sea and general trade. Many of their logs, diaries and letters were lodged at The National Archives and give a vivid picture of the situations that they encountered. Entries range from Captain James Cook's notes of his discovery of the South Pacific and Australia, to logs of the great naval battles, such as Waterloo and Trafalgar.

In 2001, journalist Jessica DuLong ditched her dot-com desk job for the diesel engines of a rusty antique fireboat, the John J. Harvey, and the storied waters of the Hudson. My River Chronicles: Rediscovering America on the Hudson tells the story of this mechanic's daughter and Stanford graduate who had left her blue-collar upbringing behind until the fireboat drew her back, offering a chance to become an engineer and a taste of home she hadn't realized she was missing.

April 14, 1912. It was an unforgettable night. In the last hours before the Titanic struck the iceberg, passengers in all classes were enjoying unprecedented luxuries. Innovations in food, drink, and décor made this voyage the apogee of Edwardian elegance. Veronica Hinke’s painstaking research and deft touch bring the Titanic’s tragic but eternally glamorous maiden voyage back to life. In addition to stirring accounts of individual tragedy and survival, The Last Night on the Titanic offers tried-and-true recipes, newly invented styles, and classic cocktails.

For three decades the Windrush was the maritime Zelig of the 20th century, playing different roles in the most turbulent years in modern times. Designed in 1930 in the Hamburg boatyard of a Jewish shipbuilder to ferry Germans to a new life in South America, it wasn't long before Goebbels requisitioned her as one of his ‘Strength Through Joy’ vessels. However, her duties soon darkened: she became a Nazi troop carrier, a support vessel for the pocket battleship Tirpitz and a prison ship transporting Jews to Auschwitz.

Rather than offering simply a detailed retelling of the Titanic's sinking on her maiden voyage, John Maxtone-Graham devotes his considerable knowledge and impeccable prose to a discussion of salient, provocative, and rarely investigated components of the story, including dramatic survivors' accounts of the events of the fateful night....

"Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex" (1821) is a memoir by Owen Chase. As 21-year-old first mate of the Essex, he left Nantucket on August 12, 1819 on a two-and-a-half-year whaling voyage. On the morning of November 20, 1820, a sperm whale (c. 26 m), twice rammed Essex, sinking her 3,700 km west of South America. The closest known islands, the Marquesas, were more than 1,900 km to the west and the captain intended to make for them but the crew feared the islands might be inhabited by cannibals and voted to make for South America.

There has never been a better time to begin boating on the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Bargains on boats are everywhere and boats of every type can bring a lifetime of pleasure and memories to everyone. From wooden skiffs to cruise ships, the Bay is alive with vessels carrying folks fishing, thrill seeking or just puttering along and enjoying the breezes and the land of pleasant living.

The lives of eight deck officers and the chairman of the White Star Line were irrevocably changed when the Titanic collided with an iceberg. Four would not survive the night, and the other five could never escape being forever linked to those events which spanned just a few hours. While it is certainly true that their adrenaline-pumped actions of April 14-15, 1912, have become the focal points of their existences, far more can be said about them. Each of these nine men experienced a lifetime of events which are told here: childhoods, apprenticeships, family life, and what may have seemed ...

Set against the backdrop of the first world's fair in London, America's Victory takes listeners into a world rich in adventure and history in an unforgettable story of skill, daring, and honor at the heart of our national identity

At 11:40 PM, Sunday evening, April 14th, 1912, the Royal Mail Steamship TITANIC, the largest and most luxurious ship in the history of the world, side swiped a massive iceberg on her Maiden Voyage to New York. The resulting impact, pierces her hull in a dozen places along her starboard side. The big ship is mortally wounded. Her first five compartments are compromised beyond any hope of repair. It is all over two hours and forty minutes later as the massive vessel breaks in two and plunges to the bottom of the icy North Atlantic. A staggering 1523 innocent people die a horrible death as a ...