Ships & Shipbuilding

In August of 1914, the British ship Endurance set sail for the South Atlantic. In October 1915, still half a continent away from its intended base, the ship was trapped, then crushed in the ice

On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants....

New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides returns with a white-knuckle tale of polar exploration and survival in the Gilded Age....

The sea is the largest museum on earth, with more than a million lost ships resting in its depths. Those shipwrecks date back thousands of years, some from civilizations long vanished, others from more recent history. Some are famous, others obscure and unremembered but each has a story to tell.

A major literary event: a never-before-published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God that brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade....

From best-selling author John U. Bacon, a gripping narrative history of the largest manmade detonation prior to Hiroshima....

Deadliest Sea by Kalee Thompson is the spellbinding true story of the greatest rescue in US Coast Guard history. Recounting the tragic sinking of the fishing trawler, Alaska Ranger, in the Bering Sea and its remarkable aftermath in March 2008....

The small ship making the Liverpool-to-New York trip in the early months of 1856 hit an iceberg that tore the ship asunder. Five lifeboats were lowered. On one were 13 souls. Only one would survive. This is his story....

In the early hours of February 25, 1968, a Russian submarine armed with three nuclear ballistic missiles set sail from its base in Siberia on a routine combat patrol to Hawaii. Then it vanished....

The gripping true story of one of the 19th century's bloodiest mutinies....

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....

Elliot Rappaport, a professional captain of traditional sailing ships, has spent three decades at sea, where understanding weather is crucial to the safety of vessels and their crews. In Reading the Glass, he offers a sailor’s-eye view of the moving parts of our atmosphere....

In 1819, the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, it was repeatedly rammed and sunk....

An immersive account of a tragedy at sea whose repercussions haunt its survivors to this day....

This work is the prime source for the biographies of many well-known pirates of that era and shaped the popular notions about pirates of the day....

Even if we live within sight of the sea, it is easy to forget that our world is an ocean world....

From the authors of the number-one best-selling The Sea Hunters comes more unforgettable true adventures with famous shipwrecks. ....

In Graveyard of the Lakes, Thompson suggests that most of the accidents and deaths on the lakes have been the result of human error, ranging from simple mistakes to gross incompetence....

Seaworthy is about nature—human and other; about learning what you can control and what you do when fate takes matters out of your control....

The technological marvel of its age, the Erie Canal grew out of a sudden fit of inspiration. Proponents didn't just dream; they built a 360-mile waterway entirely by hand....

In the late 1990s, John Pollack was working as a Washington speechwriter when, frustrated by the cynicism and hypocrisy on Capitol Hill, he quit his job to pursue a boyhood dream: to build a boat made entirely of wine corks and take it on an epic journey....

Endeavour is the story of a ship, an idea, and a way of looking at the world. It is grounded in the Enlightenment, an age of endeavors, with Britain consumed by the impulse for grand projects undertaken at speed....

A vivid narrative history of the Mayflower and of the Winslow family, who traveled to America in search of a new world....

A firsthand, never-before-told account of the creation of OceanGate, the heartbreaking Titan tragedy, and the supposed villain behind it all, Stockton Rush, as told by the only person who can: his cofounder and friend.

A cargo ship ran aground off the coast of western Alaska's Aleutian Islands during a brutal storm, leading to one of the most incredible Coast Guard rescue missions of all time....