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Books > Sport & Leisure > Transport: general interest > Ships & shipping: general interest > General
This book contains a memoir written by Miriam Lawrence describing
the extraordinary voyage she made in 1848-50 aged 20. She had
accompanied her husband, Captain Alexander Lawrence, on the maiden
voyage of the Charlotte Jane, a wooden 3 mast merchant sailing
ship. They set sail with their baby daughter, a teenage nursemaid,
a surgeon and 264 emigrants for Sydney, Australia. Then they sailed
to Hong Kong, Singapore, Bombay, Whampoa (Canton), returning via
Cape Town to London. Besides the memoir, there are extracts from
her husband's logbook and letters to and from Miriam's parents.
There are also maps showing each stage of the voyage, illustrations
of the ship from the Canterbury Museum Christchurch, New Zealand,
and contemporary pictures of the places visited. They were nearly
shipwrecked, faced fearful storms and at one point a near mutiny.
Their second child was born in the China Seas. Miriam's writing
provides an evocative account of what it had been like for a young
woman to take part in such an adventure; one which many British
merchant seamen were undertaking at that date: circumnavigating the
world.
Skeletons on the Zahara chronicles the true story of twelve
American sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of Africa in
1815, captured by desert nomads, sold into slavery, and subjected
to a hellish two-month journey through the perilous heart of the
Sahara. The western Sahara is a baking hot and desolate place, home
only to nomads and their camels, and to locusts, snails and thorny
scrub -- and its barren and ever-changing coastline has baffled
sailors for centuries. In August 1815, the US brig Commerce was
dashed against Cape Bojador and lost, although through bravery and
quick thinking the ship's captain, James Riley, managed to lead all
of his crew to safety. What followed was an extraordinary and
desperate battle for survival in the face of human hostility,
starvation, dehydration, death and despair. Captured, robbed and
enslaved, the sailors were dragged and driven through the desert by
their new owners, who neither spoke their language nor cared for
their plight. Reduced to drinking urine, flayed by the sun,
crippled by walking miles across burning stones and sand and losing
over half of their body weights, the sailors struggled to hold onto
both their humanity and their sanity. To reach safety, they would
have to overcome not only the desert but also the greed and anger
of those who would keep them in captivity. From the cold waters of
the Atlantic to the searing Saharan sands, from the heart of the
desert to the heart of man, Skeletons on the Zahara is a
spectacular odyssey through the extremes and a gripping account of
courage, brotherhood, and survival.
Originally published in Japan in 2005, each album in The Japanese
Naval Warship photo album Series contains official photographs
taken by the Kure Maritime Museum, as well as those taken by
private individuals. These pictorial records document the main
types of Japanese vessels, from battleships to submarines, based on
the best images from Shizuo Fukui, a former Imperial Japanese Navy
commander and technician. These photos include the ones Fukui began
collecting as a young boy and continued after he worked as a naval
shipbuilder, and those that he was given in order to complete a
photographic history of the Imperial Japanese Navy's ships, which
include those gathered by Nagamura Kiyoshi, a shipbuilder who
proactively collected photos, and the collection of machinist Amari
Yoshiyuki. Moreover, with the help of shipbuilder Makino Shigeru,
among others, Fukui was able to continue to gather photographs and
other items throughout the postwar period. It is not an
exaggeration, therefore, to say that Fukui dedicated his entire
life to this work. These images are especially valuable because of
the massive destruction of official documents at the end of the
war.
This book includes the principal ships engaged in the war at sea
between 1939 and 1945. The mighty battleships and cruisers that
roamed the oceans, great aircraft carriers deployed in the
Mediterranean and Pacific campaigns and the hard-pressed destroyers
and U boats engaged in the Battle of the Atlantic are described and
illustrated. The proudest ships of the British, American, German,
Italian, French and Japanese navies evoke memories of the momentous
sea battles that changed the course of the war. Bismark,
Scharnhorst, Hood, Ark Royal, Independence and Yamato are
well-known large capital ships, but most smaller ships were better
known by their class and names like Tribal, Fletcher and Buckly
represent many of the more numerous work-horses of naval might.
Founded in 1873, the Holland America Line provided services
carrying passengers and freight between the Netherlands and North
America. When the Second World War ended, only nine of Holland
America Line's twenty-five ships had survived and the company set
about rebuilding. The pride of HAL's post-war fleet was SS
Rotterdam, completed in 1959, which was one of the first ships on
the North Atlantic equipped to offer two-class transatlantic
crossings and single-class luxury cruising. However, competition
from the airlines meant that in the early 1970s Holland America
ended their transatlantic passenger services; in 1973 the company
sold its cargo-shipping division. Now owned by the American cruise
line Carnival, Holland America offers round-the-world voyages and
cruises in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and Asia. In this book,
renowned ocean liner historian and author William H. Miller takes a
look at the Holland America Line and its post-war fleet up to 2015.
*A Newstatesman Book of the Year* 'Nimble, vital, unexpectedly
affecting' Observer Bestselling travel writer Horatio Clare joins
an icebreaker for a voyage through the ice-packs of the far north.
'We are celebrating a hundred years since independence this year:
how would you like to travel on a government icebreaker?' A message
from the Finnish embassy launches Horatio Clare on a voyage around
an extraordinary country and an unearthly place, the frozen Bay of
Bothnia, just short of the Arctic circle. Travelling with the crew
of Icebreaker Otso, Horatio, whose last adventure saw him embedded
on Maersk container vessels for the bestseller Down to the Sea in
Ships, discovers stories of Finland, of her mariners and of ice.
Aboard Otso Horatio gets to know the men who make up her crew, and
explores Finland's history and character. Surrounded by the
extraordinary colours and conditions of a frozen sea, he also comes
to understand something of the complexity and fragile beauty of
ice, a near-miraculous substance which cools the planet, gives the
stars their twinkle and which may hold all our futures in its
crystals.
In The Great Escape and Papillon, Steve McQueen embodied the tough
guy on the run from captivity and injustice. But when it comes to
toughness, McQueen is following in the daring and determined
footsteps of Captain Spar. Wrongfully accused, Spar has been
condemned to suffer the brutality of the guards and the conditions
on Devil's Island. But they haven't broken his will, and now,
escaping, he has one mission in life: revenge. Spar's out to kill
the man who put him into the devil's hands. But he'll have to take
on a gallery of rogues who are as treacherous as the waters of the
Caribbean. Pressure is rising and a storm is brewing. But even in
the face of a natural disaster, Spar discovers that nothing is more
volatile than human nature-as temptation and danger are about to
collide with Hurricane force. In 1937 L. Ron Hubbard wrote to one
of his editors: "You might have noticed that I am intensely wary of
becoming any kind of a story specialist. I have sold the gamut of
types: air war, air, western, detective, love, terror. . . . My one
passion is to build a name for variety. . . . I like my freedom. I
fight hard for independent individualism. I love to tie into a yarn
and make it blaze in print." Hubbard's passion for writing,
creativity and individualism certainly blazes across the page in
stories like Hurricane. "Hurricane will keep you on the edge of
your seat from beginning to end as it unfolds." -Mommy's Favorite
Things * An International Book Awards Finalists
The 'SS United States' was a great symbol of post-World War II
American genius. She was the most advanced ocean liner of her
time-modern, innovative and hugely powerful. Designed to be a
commercial liner but easily convertible to wartime troopship, she
entered service in July 1952, seventy years ago, to rousing triumph
and success. She captured the prized Blue Riband for transatlantic
speed, brought glory to America and her owners, and enjoyed great
success for a full decade. But after trans-ocean jets arrived, her
success slowly faded until fully decommissioned by 1969. Over fifty
years of idleness, revival plans and schemes, and neglect and decay
followed. To this day, the 'United States' waits silently at a
Philadelphia pier. This is the story of a very great and beloved
ship-her glory days, but also her days of struggle and indecision.
At the height of the Second World War this small pocket-book was
issued to all ratings on board ships of the Royal Navy. In straight
period prose it outlines all the basic expressions and tasks a
seaman needed to know to perform his duties efficiently. Chapters
are broken down into: Sea Terms; Navigation; Steering the Ship;
Rigging; Anchors and Cables; Boatwork; Miscellaneous (which
includes details on uniform and folding a hammock, etc); and Ship
Safety. Functional black line illustrations are used throughout, as
well as a few pages of colour (used sparingly) for flag
recognition. Faithfully reproduced, with a short introduction by
Brian Lavery, which explains the importance of a book like this to
a navy that had to take on vast numbers of civilians or Hostilities
Only men to meet the manning needs of the war, this volume provides
a real mixture of wartime nostalgia and historical authenticity. It
makes a world now lost to us accessible again, explaining as it
does the terms, skills and conventions of ship board life, a life
that required a common language, and where failure to respond to
orders instantly could mean the difference between life and death.
The book is sure to appeal to those who served in the war as well
as the current generation who are becoming increasingly interested
in the role their grandparents, fathers and uncles played during
that time.
The coasts of Scotland are a goldmine for fishing boats new and
old, and this latest selection from James Pottinger covers a huge
variety of them - from early trawlers to seine net boats, to modern
twin rig side and stern trawlers. As it does so, it demonstrates
the changes that evolved in the design of the boats themselves, as
progress marches on: the numbers of handsome wooden boats have
declined, while the smaller boats have flourished, now rigging
themselves for trawling, lining and shellfish catching. With over
200 photographs, many previously unpublished, Scotland's Fishing
Boats is a photographic journey through time at a variety of
locations around Scotland and the Isles.
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