Sir Ranulph Fiennes is uniquely qualified to write a new biography of Captain Scott. This is the first biography of Scott by someone who has experienced the deprivations, the stress and the sheer physical pain that Scott lived through; he has suffered all but the final tragedy endured by the much maligned Scott. He is determined to put the record straight. As well as being the definitive biography of Scott, written with the full and exclusive cooperation of the Scott Estate, this book traces the way that Scott's reputation has been attacked and his achievements distorted. 'Sir Ranulph Fiennes has done Captain Scott's memory some service...he has certainly written a more dispassionate and balanced account than Huntford ever set out to do.' - Simon Courtauld, Spectator

In 1820 John Bailie, a member of an Anglo-Irish landowning family and former lieutenant in the Royal Navy, led a large party of British immigrants to South Africa as part of a group later to be known as the 1820 Settlers. His party soon dissolved, but Bailie became extensively involved not only in the affairs of the Eastern Cape, but also those of the Transorange in the early stages of European settlement, and the colony of Natal.

This biography of John Bailie and his family, based on the extensive research of Mrs M.D. Nash, an authority on the British Settlers, tells the story of an adventurous life inextricably linked with the colonial history of South Africa during the first half of the nineteenth century. The present volume, the second of three, deals more specifically with the manner in which the settlers adjusted to their new environment.

UPDATED WITH NEW MATERIAL FROM THE AUTHOR In The Curse of Oak Island, longtime Rolling Stone contributing editor and journalist Randall Sullivan explored the curious history of Oak Island and the generations of people who tried and failed to unlock its secrets. Drawing on his exclusive access to Marty and Rick Lagina, stars of the History Channel's television show The Curse of Oak Island, Sullivan delivers an up to the minute chronicle of their ongoing search for the truth. In 1795, a teenager discovered a mysterious circular depression in the ground on Oak Island, in Nova Scotia, Canada, and ignited rumors of buried treasure. Early excavators uncovered a clay-lined shaft containing layers of soil interspersed with wooden platforms, but when they reached a depth of ninety feet, water poured into the shaft and made further digging impossible. Since then the mystery of Oak Island's "Money Pit" has enthralled generations of treasure hunters, including a Boston insurance salesman whose obsession ruined him; young Franklin Delano Roosevelt; and film star Errol Flynn. Perplexing discoveries have ignited explorers' imaginations: a flat stone inscribed in code; a flood tunnel draining from a man-made beach; a torn scrap of parchment; stone markers forming a huge cross. Swaths of the island were bulldozed looking for answers; excavation attempts have claimed two lives. Theories abound as to what's hidden on Oak Island. Could it be pirates' treasure or Marie Antoinette's lost jewels? Or perhaps the Holy Grail or proof of the identity of the true author of Shakespeare's plays? In this rich, fascinating account, Sullivan takes readers along as the Lagina brothers mount the most comprehensive effort yet to crack the mystery, and chronicles the incredible history of the "curse" of Oak Island, where for two centuries dreams of buried treasure have led intrepid treasure hunters to sacrifice everything.

"The best book so far to answer the question 'Who discovered America?'...This important, spell-binding report replaces sugar-coated myths about Columbus's invasion of America with indispensable history." --Publishers Weekly

"A thoughtful and challenging consideration of the many voyagers who might have reached the Americas by sea before the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria...Well informed and well written, always provocative if not conclusive, this is revisionist history with a vengeance --and about time, too." --Kirkus Reviews

"Persuasively and emphatically disputes the fact that Columbus actually discovered America...A long-overdue tribute to a score of forgotten and disregarded explorers, adventurers, and sailors. Highly recommended..." --Booklist

Patrick Huyghe is a writer, editor, and television producer. He spent two decades writing about science for magazines from Omni to Discover; produced television documentaries for WGBH and WNET; and is the author of nine books.

Rene Caillie was the first European who penetrated to Timbuctoo and returned to communicate the information he had collected. This account was first published in 1830, and records observations of a journey of 4500 miles, of which 3000 were hitherto unknown to Europeans.

Nature's Explorers celebrates the individuals who made great personal endeavours in order to document the natural world. Their findings revolutionised our understanding of nature and gave birth to the modern fields of geography, evolutionary biology, oceanography and anthropology. From ground-breaking theorists such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace to evocative artists like Ferdinand Bauer and John James Audubon, these explorers shared an ambition to illuminate new worlds and each embodied the spirit of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.

In 1528, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong: Delayed by a hurricane, knocked off course by a colossal error of navigation, and ultimately doomed by a disastrous decision to separate the men from their ships, the mission quickly became a desperate journey of survival. Of the three hundred men who had embarked on the journey, only four survived,three Spaniards and an African slave. This tiny band endured a horrific march through Florida, a harrowing raft passage across the Louisiana coast, and years of enslavement in the American Southwest. They journeyed for almost ten years in search of the Pacific Ocean that would guide them home, and they were forever changed by their experience. The men lived with a variety of nomadic Indians and learned several indigenous languages. They saw lands, peoples, plants, and animals that no outsider had ever seen before. In this enthralling tale of four castaways wandering in an unknown land, Andres Resendez brings to life the vast, dynamic world of North America just a few years before European settlers would transform it forever.

John James Audubon's The Birds of America stands as an unparalleled achievement in American art, a huge book that puts nature dramatically on the page. With that work, Audubon became one of the most adulated artists of his time, and America's first celebrity scientist. In this fresh approach to Audubon's art and science, Gregory Nobles shows us that Audubon's greatest creation was himself. A self-made man incessantly striving to secure his place in American society, Audubon made himself into a skilled painter, a successful entrepreneur, and a prolific writer, whose words went well beyond birds and scientific description. He sought status with the "gentlemen of science" on both sides of the Atlantic, but he also embraced the ornithology of ordinary people. In pursuit of popular acclaim in art and science, Audubon crafted an expressive, audacious, and decidedly masculine identity as the "American Woodsman," a larger-than-life symbol of the new nation, a role he perfected in his quest for transatlantic fame. Audubon didn't just live his life; he performed it. In exploring that performance, Nobles pays special attention to Audubon's stories, some of which-the murky circumstances of his birth, a Kentucky hunting trip with Daniel Boone, an armed encounter with a runaway slave-Audubon embellished with evasions and outright lies. Nobles argues that we cannot take all of Audubon's stories literally, but we must take them seriously. By doing so, we come to terms with the central irony of Audubon's true nature: the man who took so much time and trouble to depict birds so accurately left us a bold but deceptive picture of himself.

At the heart of this landmark collection of essays rests a single question: What impact, good or bad, immediate or long-range, did Lewis and Clark's journey have on the Indians whose homelands they traversed? The nine writers in this volume each provide their own unique answers; from Pulitzer prize-winner N. Scott Momaday, who offers a haunting essay evoking the voices of the past; to Debra Magpie Earling's illumination of her ancestral family, their survival, and the magic they use to this day; to Mark N. Trahant's attempt to trace his own blood back to Clark himself; and Roberta Conner's comparisons of the explorer's journals with the accounts of the expedition passed down to her. Incisive and compelling, these essays shed new light on our understanding of this landmark journey into the American West.

In the summer of 1845, Sir John Franklin and a crew of 128 men entered Lancaster Sound on board HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in search of a Northwest Passage. The sturdy former bomb ships were substantially strengthened and fitted with the latest technologies for polar service and, at the time, were the most advanced sailing vessels developed for Polar exploration. Both ships, but especially HMS Terror, had already proven their capabilities in the Arctic and Antarctic. With such sophisticated, rugged, and successful vessels, victory over the Northwest Passage seemed inevitable, yet the entire crew vanished, and the ships were never seen again by Europeans. Finally, in 2014, the wreck of HMS Erebus was discovered by Parks Canada. Two years later, the wreck of HMS Terror was found, sitting upright, in near pristine condition. The extraordinarily well-preserved state and location of the ships, so far south of their last reported position, raises questions about the role they played in the tragedy. Did the extraordinary capabilities of the ships in fact contribute to the disaster? Never before has the Franklin Mystery been comprehensively examined through the lens of its sailing technology. This book documents the history, design, modification, and fitting of HMS Terror, one of the world's most successful polar exploration vessels. Part historical narrative and part technical design manual, this book provides, for the first time, a complete account of Terror's unique career, as well as an assessment of her sailing abilities in polar conditions, a record of her design specifications, and a full set of accurate plans of her final 1845 configuration. Based on meticulous historical research, the book details the ship's every bolt and belaying pin, and ends with the discovery and identification of the wreck in 2016, explaining how the successes and ice-worthiness of Terror may have contributed to the Franklin disaster itself. It is an ideal reference for those interested in the Franklin Mystery, in polar exploration, the Royal Navy, and in ship design and modelling.

Durante el tiempo que paso en las islas portuguesas de Porto Santo y Madeira, Cristobal Colon, un navegante de Genova, estuvo a cargo de un marinero moribundo, de Castilla, cuya carabela habia sido llevado por la corriente del Golfo de Guinea a un mar remoto, posiblemente el Caribe. En su lecho de muerte, este hombre habia dicho Columbus el secreto de algunas tierras donde habian llegado siberianos durante el Pleistoceno y algunos documentos sobre algunos de los posibles viajes anteriores. Este marinero aseguro que esas tierras que habia logrado llevado por las corrientes eran los mismos que se referia. Cuando Colon llego a Espana, trato de convencer a la Corona de Castilla de sus proyectos, que eran precisamente los mismos que Isaias habia profetizado como destino para obtener los limites de los horizontes. Durante su descripcion, Columbus parecia tan seguro de que tanto la Reina Isabel y el Rey Fernando se preguntaron si el estaba tratando de ocultar una realidad probada, un misterio que llevo a su tumba. Colon les pidio una subvencion, Fernando el Catolico le comento que las arcas estaban vacias en ese momento, ya que solo habia subyugado toda Al-Andalus tras la toma de Granada, por lo que la derrota del rey nazari mas mala suerte, Boabdil, conocido como "el pequeno hombre." Debido a que los exploradores espanoles del siglo 15, Espana se convirtio en la mayor potencia comercial entre los paises europeos. Ellos construyeron asentamientos que duraria hasta tres siglos mas tarde, en un proceso expansivo de colonizacion, hasta la perdida del poder espanol en los territorios de la decada de 1810, cuando comenzo la Independencia. Desde finales del siglo 18, hasta principios del siglo 19, el Oeste fue testigo de una serie de revoluciones en cadena que afecto a Europa occidental y America del espanol al mismo tiempo. La invasion de Napoleon, Francisco de Miranda, Simon Bolivar, logias masonicas, junto con envidias, traiciones o amantes hacen que este libro sea una emocionante aventura basada en la verdadera historia.

Captain Woodfield made 20 seasonal voyages to the Antarctic on three research ships between 1955 and 1974. Starting as a Junior Deck Officer he worked for The Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey which in 1964 became the British Antarctic Survey. He played a paramount role in the gradual change from using under-powered and poorly-equipped ships to the professionally-managed and sophisticated vessels of his last command. The arts of exploration and survival during his early years in this majestic but unforgiving continent are described as attempts were made to establish research stations, support science, and survey in totally uncharted, ice-filled waters amidst often ferocious weather. Dramatic stories are featured such as the near loss of a ship in pack ice, the stranding of another in hurricane force winds and the collapse of an ice-cliff onto the vessel The pioneers of Antarctic exploration, the area's history, the hardships and incredible achievements of those original seafarers are described.Yet polar navigation during the author's years was not without peril and the near loss in ice of his first ship, the RRS Shackleton, the demise of her Master, and his ill-judged replacement and consequent dramas are fully told.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, accounts of the journey down the Nile became increasingly common. This narrative by William John Loftie (1839-1911), who wrote prolifically on travel, art, architecture and history, was published in 1879. (His A Century of Bibles is also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection.) Loftie spent in total about 15 months in the Nile valley over several seasons, and justifies his book by the rate of archaeological discoveries: 'books published even three years ago are already behind the times'. He gives details of his journeys to and from Egypt, and of visits to the famous sites, but, unusually, he takes notice of the current political and economic state of Egypt, and is trenchant in some of his criticisms. He also goes off the beaten tourist track, hiring donkeys to make excursions away from the river, rather than travelling only by boat.

The story of how the fearsome Atlantic Ocean was explored by early sailors, including the Vikings, whose brilliant navigation matched their bravery. The early voyages into the deep waters of the Atlantic rank among the greatest feats of exploration. In tiny, fragile vessels the Irish monks searched for desolate places in the ocean in which to pursue their vocation; their successors, the Vikings, with their superb ship-building skills, created fast, sea-worthy craft which took them far out into the unknown, until they finally reached Greenland and America. G.J. Marcus looks at the history of theseexpeditions not only as a historian, but also as a practical sailor. Besides the problem of what these early explorers actually achieved, he poses the even more fascinating question of how they did it, without compass, quadrant, or astrolabe. From the opening descriptions of the launching of a curach on the Aran Islands, through the great pages of the Norse Sagas describing the first recorded sighting of America, the author brilliantly conveys theexcitement and danger of the conquest of the North Atlantic in a narrative that is based equally on scholarly research and sound seamanship. G.J. MARCUS's previous books include The Maiden Voyage, on the sinking of the Titanic.

This vivid book retells the story of Captain Cook's great voyages in the South Seas, focusing on the encounters between the explorers and the island peoples they "discovered." While Cook and his men were initially confounded by the Polynesians, they were also curious. Cook and his crew soon formed friendships-and often more intimate relationships-with the islanders. The islanders, who initially were not certain if the Englishmen were even human, came to experiment with Western customs and in some cases joined the voyagers on their expeditions. But familiarity quickly bred contempt. Shipboard discipline was threatened by these new relationships, and the culture of the islands was also changed forever. Captain Cook, initially determined to act as an enlightened leader, saw his resolve falter during the third voyage. Amicable relations turned hostile, culminating in Cook's violent death on the shores of Hawaii. In this masterful account of Cook's voyages, Anne Salmond-a preeminent authority on the history of the south seas-reimagines two worlds that collided in the eighteenth century, and the enduring impact of that collision.

From brilliant young polymath Andrew Rader - an MIT-credentialled scientist, popular podcast host and SpaceX mission manager - an illuminating chronicle of exploration that spotlights humans' insatiable desire to continually push into new and uncharted territory, from civilisation's earliest days to current planning for interstellar travel. For the first time in history, the human species has the technology to destroy itself. But having developed that power, humans are also able to leave Earth and voyage into the vastness of space. After millions of years of evolution, we've arrived at the point where we can settle other worlds and begin the process of becoming multi-planetary. How did we get here? What does the future hold for us? Divided into four accessible sections, Beyond the Known examines major periods of discovery and rediscovery, from Classical Times, when Phoenicians, Persians and Greeks ventured forth; to The Age of European Exploration, which saw colonies sprout on nearly every continent; to The Era of Scientific Inquiry, when researchers developed brand new tools for mapping and travelling further; to Our Spacefaring Future, which unveils plans currently underway for settling other planets and, eventually, travelling to the stars. A Mission Manager at SpaceX with a light, engaging voice, Andrew Rader is at the forefront of space exploration. As a gifted historian, Rader, who has won global acclaim for his stunning breadth of knowledge, is singularly positioned to reveal the story of human exploration that is also the story of scientific achievement. Told with an infectious zeal for travelling beyond the known, Beyond the Known illuminates how very human it is to emerge from the cave and walk towards an infinitely expanding horizon.

In 1498 a young captain named Vasco da Gama sailed from Portugal, circumnavigated Africa, crossed the Indian Ocean, and discovered the sea route to the Indies and, with it, access to the fabled wealth of the East. It was the longest voyage ever undertaken at that time. With blood-red Crusader crosses emblazoned on their sails, the explorers arrived in the heart of the Muslim East in an era when the old hostilities between Christianity and Islam had risen to a new level of intensity. In two voyages that spanned six years, da Gama would fight a running sea battle that would ultimately change the fate of three continents.

The Last Crusade is an epic tale of spies, intrigue, and treachery--of bravado, brinkmanship, and confused, often comical collisions between cultures--offering a surprising new interpretation of the broad sweep of history.