Capturing the times when lives and victory were in peril, this book records the exploits of the men who fought in WWII in the air and on the sea, including pilots and air crewmen of carrier squadrons, officers and men of the ship's company, and admirals and their staffs.

"This volume represents a sea change in educational resources for the history of piracy. In a single, readable, and affordable volume, Lane and Bialuschewski present a wonderfully diverse body of primary texts on sea raiders. Drawn from a variety of sources, including the authors' own archival research and translations, these carefully curated texts cover over two hundred years (1548--1726) of global, early-modern piracy. Lane and Bialuschewski provide glosses of each document and a succinct introduction to the historical context of the period and avoid the romanticized and Anglo-centric depictions of maritime predation that often plague work on the topic." -Jesse Cromwell, The University of Mississippi

At Scapa Flow on 21 June 1919, there occurred an event unique in naval history. The German High Seas Fleet, one of the most formidable ever built was deliberately sent to the bottom of the sea at the British Grand Fleet's principal anchorage at Orkney by its own officers and men.The Grand Scuttle became a folk legend in both Germany and Britain. However, few people are aware that Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter became the only man in history to sink his own navy because of a misleading report in a British newspaper; that the Royal Navy guessed his intention but could do nothing to thwart it; that the sinking produced the last casualties and the last prisoners of the war; and that fragments of the Kaiser's fleet are probably on the moon.This is the remarkable story of the scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow. It contains previously unused German archive material, eye-witness accounts and the recollections of survivors, as well as many contemporary photos which capture the awesome spectacle of the finest ships of the time being deliberately sunk by their own crew.

This amusing insight into Cunard's legendary liners begins more than fifty years ago when Paul Curtis joined the original Queen Mary as entertainments officer. Over a Cunard high tea in the Queens Room, Paul recounts the stories of these iconic ships. Then, over a drink in the Red Lion, he shares the tales of the antics of both passengers and crews. The facts are delivered in vivid detail - some of them things you should know and an occasional peep at things you shouldn't. Simply turning these pages releases a sniff of the sea and a whiff of champagne. Paul has worked, travelled upon or photographed every Cunard Queen ever built. He has an offbeat sense of humour and a keen appetite for the ridiculous. A life at sea can do that to you.

Dockworkers have power. Often missed in commentary on today's globalizing economy, workers in the world's ports can harness their role, at a strategic choke point, to promote their labor rights and social justice causes. Peter Cole brings such overlooked experiences to light in an eye-opening comparative study of Durban, South Africa, and the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Path-breaking research reveals how unions effected lasting change in some of the most far-reaching struggles of modern times. First, dockworkers in each city drew on longstanding radical traditions to promote racial equality. Second, they persevered when a new technology--container ships--sent a shockwave of layoffs through the industry. Finally, their commitment to black internationalism and leftist politics sparked transnational work stoppages to protest apartheid and authoritarianism. Dockworker Power not only brings to light surprising parallels in the experiences of dockers half a world away from each other. It also offers a new perspective on how workers can change their conditions and world.

Two centuries before the daring exploits of Navy SEALs and Marine Raiders captured the public imagination, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps were already engaged in similarly perilous missions: raiding pirate camps, attacking enemy ships in the dark of night, and striking enemy facilities and resources on shore. Even John Paul Jones, father of the American navy, saw such irregular operations as critical to naval warfare. With Jones's own experience as a starting point, Benjamin Armstrong sets out to take irregular naval warfare out of the shadow of the blue-water battles that dominate naval history. This book, the first historical study of its kind, makes a compelling case for raiding and irregular naval warfare as key elements in the story of American sea power. Beginning with the Continental Navy, Small Boats and Daring Men traces maritime missions through the wars of the early republic, from the coast of modern-day Libya to the rivers and inlets of the Chesapeake Bay. At the same time, Armstrong examines the era's conflicts with nonstate enemies and threats to American peacetime interests along Pacific and Caribbean shores. Armstrong brings a uniquely informed perspective to his subject; and his work - with reference to original naval operational reports, sailors' memoirs and diaries, and officers' correspondence - is at once an exciting narrative of danger and combat at sea and a thoroughgoing analysis of how these events fit into concepts of American sea power. Offering a critical new look at the naval history of the Early American era, this book also raises fundamental questions for naval strategy in the twenty-first century.

A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels by Robert Kerr is an 18 volume set that contains the complete history of the origin and progress of navigation, discovery, and commerce, by sea and land. In determining upon an era for the commencement of this work, Kerr was led, from a consideration of the accidental discovery of Iceland by the Norwegians in the ninth century, to adopt that period as the beginning of the series, both because the commencement of modern maritime discovery took place during the reign of a British sovereign, and because we derive the earliest written accounts of any of these discoveries from the pen of that excellent prince. It is true that the first accidental discovery of Iceland appears to have been made in 861, eleven years before the accession of Alfred to the throne; yet, as the actual colonization of that island did not take place till the year 878, the seventh of his glorious reign, we have been induced to distinguish the actual commencement of maritime discovery by the modern European nations as coinciding with his era.

A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels by Robert Kerr is an 18 volume set that contains the complete history of the origin and progress of navigation, discovery, and commerce, by sea and land. In determining upon an era for the commencement of this work, Kerr was led, from a consideration of the accidental discovery of Iceland by the Norwegians in the ninth century, to adopt that period as the beginning of the series, both because the commencement of modern maritime discovery took place during the reign of a British sovereign, and because we derive the earliest written accounts of any of these discoveries from the pen of that excellent prince. It is true that the first accidental discovery of Iceland appears to have been made in 861, eleven years before the accession of Alfred to the throne; yet, as the actual colonization of that island did not take place till the year 878, the seventh of his glorious reign, we have been induced to distinguish the actual commencement of maritime discovery by the modern European nations as coinciding with his era.

A new international maritime order was forged in the early modern age, yet until now histories of the period have dealt almost exclusively with the Atlantic and Indian oceans. "Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants" shifts attention to the Mediterranean, providing a major history of an important but neglected sphere of the early modern maritime world, and upending the conventional view of the Mediterranean as a religious frontier where Christians and Muslims met to do battle.

Molly Greene investigates the conflicts between the Catholic pirates of Malta--the Knights of St. John--and their victims, the Greek merchants who traded in Mediterranean waters, and uses these conflicts as a window into an international maritime order that was much more ambiguous than has been previously thought. The Greeks, as Christian subjects to the Muslim Ottomans, were the very embodiment of this ambiguity. Much attention has been given to Muslim pirates such as the Barbary corsairs, with the focus on Muslim-on-Christian violence. Greene delves into the archives of Malta's pirate court--which theoretically offered redress to these Christian victims--to paint a considerably more complex picture and to show that pirates, far from being outside the law, were vital actors in the continuous negotiations of legality and illegality in the Mediterranean Sea.

"Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants" brings the Mediterranean and Catholic piracy into the broader context of early modern history, and sheds new light on commerce and the struggle for power in this volatile age.

On the night of 14/15 April 1912, a brandnew, 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 in the icy-cold waters of the North Atlantic. How could this 'unsinkable' vessel sink and why did so few of those aboard survive? The authors bring the tragedy to life, telling the story of the ship's design, construction and maiden voyage. The stories of individuals who sailed on her, many previously known only as names on yellowing passenger and crew lists, are brought to light using rarely-seen accounts of the sinking. The stories of passengers of all classes and crewmembers alike, are explored. They tell the dramatic stories of lives lost and people saved, of the rescue ship Carpathia, and of the aftermath of the sinking. Never again would a large passenger liner sail without lifeboats for all. Despite the tragedy, the sinking of the Titanic indirectly led to untold numbers of lives being saved due to new regulations that came into force after the tragedy. Profusely illustrated, including many rare and unique views of the ship and those who sailed on her, this is as accurate and engrossing a telling of the life of the White Star Line's Titanic and her sinking as you will read anywhere. Made special by the use of so many rare survivor accounts from the eye witnesses to that night to remember, the narrative places the reader in the middle of the maiden voyage, and brings the tragic sinking to life as never before.

From their earliest encounters with seaborne strangers from the east in the sixteenth century to the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, scattered bands of Native hunter-gatherers across northeastern North America came together to undertake an immense political project. Their campaign of sea and shore, emboldened by a revolutionary technology, brought wealth, honor, and power to their confederacy while alienating colonial neighbors and thwarting English and French imperialism. Afloat, Indian hunter-warriors commanded fleets of sailing ships and coordinated punitive and plundering assaults on the heart of England's Atlantic economy. Ashore, Indian diplomats engaged in shrewd transatlantic negotiations with imperial officials of French Acadia and New England. Wabanaki communities had long looked to the sea for opportunities. By the Atlantic's Age of Sail, the People of the Dawn were mobilizing it to achieve a Native dominion governed by its sovereign masters and enriched by its profitable and compliant tributaries.

In his famous book A Night to Remember, historian Walter Lord described the sinking of the Titanic as 'the last night of a small town'. Now, a hundred years after her sinking, John Welshman reconstructs the fascinating individual histories of twelve of the inhabitants of this tragically short-lived floating town. They include members of the crew; passengers in First, Second, and Third Class; women and men; adults and children; rich and poor. Among them are a ship's Captain, a Second Officer, an Assistant Wireless Operator; a Stewardess, an amateur military historian, a governess, a teacher, a domestic servant, a mother, and three children. What were their earlier histories? Who survived, and why, and who perished? And what happened to these people in the years after 1912? Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town answers all these questions and more, while offering a minute-by-minute depiction of events aboard the doomed liner through the eyes of a broad and representative cross-section of those who sailed in her - both those who survived and those who didn't.

"This volume represents a sea change in educational resources for the history of piracy. In a single, readable, and affordable volume, Lane and Bialuschewski present a wonderfully diverse body of primary texts on sea raiders. Drawn from a variety of sources, including the authors' own archival research and translations, these carefully curated texts cover over two hundred years (1548--1726) of global, early-modern piracy. Lane and Bialuschewski provide glosses of each document and a succinct introduction to the historical context of the period and avoid the romanticized and Anglo-centric depictions of maritime predation that often plague work on the topic." -Jesse Cromwell, The University of Mississippi

Just in time for the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic, this graphic deluxe edition compiles first hand accounts, testimonies, and letters by notable Titanic survivors, including Archibald Gracie, Lawrence Beesley, Elizabeth W. Shutes, and the "unsinkable" Molly Brown. Full of historically accurate details and an afterword by the grandson of Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivors and author of The Loss of the S.S. Titanic, it will be the gift to give die-hard Titanic buffs. Authoritative, commemorative and in a striking, luxurious package with and introduction by Titanic enthusiast and expert, Tim Maltin, this will be the authoritative work on the disaster.

Here is a survivor's vivid account of the greatest maritime disaster in history. The information contained in Gracie's account is available from no other source. He provides details of those final moments, including names of passengers pulled from the ocean and of those men who, in a panic, jumped into lifeboats as they were being lowered, causing injury and further danger to life. Walter Lord, author of "A Night to Remember," comments that Gracie's book--written shortly before he died from the exposure he suffered on that night--is "invaluable for chasing down who went in what boat," and calls Gracie "an indefatigable detective."

The Pacific of the early eighteenth century was not a single ocean but a vast and varied waterscape, a place of baffling complexity, with 25,000 islands and seemingly endless continental shorelines. But with the voyages of Captain James Cook, global attention turned to the Pacific, and European and American dreams of scientific exploration, trade, and empire grew dramatically. By the time of the California gold rush, the Pacific's many shores were fully integrated into world markets-and world consciousness. The Great Ocean draws on hundreds of documented voyages-some painstakingly recorded by participants, some only known by archeological remains or indigenous memory-as a window into the commercial, cultural, and ecological upheavals following Cook's exploits, focusing in particular on the eastern Pacific in the decades between the 1770s and the 1840s. Beginning with the expansion of trade as seen via the travels of William Shaler, captain of the American Brig Lelia Byrd, historian David Igler uncovers a world where voyagers, traders, hunters, and native peoples met one another in episodes often marked by violence and tragedy. Igler describes how indigenous communities struggled against introduced diseases that cut through the heart of their communities; how the ordeal of Russian Timofei Tarakanov typified the common practice of taking hostages and prisoners; how Mary Brewster witnessed first-hand the bloody "great hunt" that decimated otters, seals, and whales; how Adelbert von Chamisso scoured the region, carefully compiling his notes on natural history; and how James Dwight Dana rivaled Charles Darwin in his pursuit of knowledge on a global scale. These stories-and the historical themes that tie them together-offer a fresh perspective on the oceanic worlds of the eastern Pacific. Ambitious and broadly conceived, The Great Ocean is the first book to weave together American, oceanic, and world history in a path-breaking portrait of the Pacific world.

Waterford harbour has centuries of tradition based on its extensive fishery and maritime trade. Steeped in history, customs and an enviable spirit, it was there that Andrew Doherty was born and raised amongst a treasure chest of stories spun by the fishermen, sailors and their families. As an adult he began to research these accounts and, to his surprise, found many were based on fact. In this book, Doherty will take you on a fascinating journey along the harbour, introduce you to some of its most important sites and people, the area's history, and some of its most fantastic tales. Dreaded press gangs who raided whole communities for crew, the search for buried gold and a ship seized by pirates, the horror of a German bombing of the rural idyll during the Second World War - on every page of this incredible account you will learn something of the maritime community of Waterford Harbour.

Winner of the Penang Book Prize 2019 Nusantaria - often referred to as 'Maritime Southeast Asia' - is the world's largest archipelago and has, for centuries, been a vital cultural and trading hub. Nusantara, a Sanskrit, then Malay, word referring to an island realm, is here adapted to become Nusantaria - denoting a slightly wider world but one with a single linguistic, cultural and trading base. Nusantaria encompasses the lands and shores created by the melting of the ice following the last Ice Age. These have long been primarily the domain of the Austronesian-speaking peoples and their seafaring traditions. The surrounding waters have always been uniquely important as a corridor connecting East Asia to India, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. In this book, Philip Bowring provides a history of the world's largest and most important archipelago and its adjacent coasts. He tells the story of the peoples and lands located at this crucial maritime and cultural crossroads, from its birth following the last Ice Age to today.

In SS Great Britain, Helen Doe provides a narrative account of this famous and historically important ship. Experimental and controversial, Great Britain led the way for iron shipbuilding and screw propulsion. The book charts the ship's brilliant design and construction, and the tribulations of her owners as they battled financial crises to turn Isambard Kingdom Brunel's vision into reality. Brunel was passionate about this ship and was devastated when a navigational error stranded her in Dundrum Bay, Ireland. She was rescued in a great feat of salvage and went on to a long life at sea, carrying passengers to New York, troops to the Crimea and India, and thousands of emigrants to Australia. Helen Doe highlights the contribution of the many individuals connected to the ship, ranging from crew members to passengers, at least one grand Victorian scandal, and the mysterious disappearance of her long-serving captain. In this way, the ship's life and times are recreated and the history of a technical marvel is given a human face. The ship was salvaged a second time, when she was rescued from the Falkland Islands and towed home across the Atlantic. She now sits in splendour in her original dock in Bristol and is one of the most visited attractions in Britain. This a compelling account of an iconic ship and of an important moment in industrial history.

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.

This collection offers new perspectives on the legacy of British colonisation by concentrating on Atlantic Canada (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island), a region that was pivotal to safeguarding Britain's imperial ambitions, between 1750 and 1930. New and established researchers from Canada, Scotland and the United States engage with the core themes of migration, dispossession, religion, identity, and commemoration in a way that diverges markedly from existing scholarship. The research shines much-needed light on groups traditionally excluded from Britain's broader imperial narrative, highlighting the indigenous experience and the presence and agency of slaves, free people of colour and religious minorities.

When Western scholars write about non-Western societies, do they inevitably perpetuate the myths of European imperialism? Can they ever articulate the meanings and logics of non-Western peoples? Who has the right to speak for whom? Questions such as these are debated in this text. Marshall Sahlins addresses these issues head on, while building a case for the ability of anthropologists working in the Western tradition to understand other cultures. In recent years, these questions have arisen in debates over the death and deification of Captain James Cook on Hawaii Island in 1779. Did the Hawaiians truly receive Cook as a manifestation of their own god Lono? Or were they too pragmatic, too worldly-wise to accept the foreigner as a god? Moreover, can a "non-native" scholar give voice to a "native" point of view? This volume seeks to go far beyond specialized debates about the alleged superiority of Western traditions. The culmination of Sahlins's ethnohistorical research on Hawaii, is a reaffirmation for understanding difference.

Facing an insurmountable deficit in resources compared to the Union navy, the Confederacy resorted to unorthodox forms of warfare to combat enemy forces. Perhaps the most energetic and effective torpedo corps and secret service company organized during the American Civil War, the Singer Secret Service Corps, led by Texan inventor and entrepreneur Edgar Collins Singer, developed and deployed submarines, underwater weaponry, and explosive devices. The group's main government-financed activity, which eventually led to other destructive inventions such as the Hunley submarine and behind-enemy-line railroad sabotage, was the manufacture and deployment of an underwater contact mine. During the two years the Singer group operated, several Union gunboats, troop transports, supply trains, and even the famous ironclad monitor Tecumseh fell prey to its inventions. In Confederate Saboteurs: Building the Hunley and Other Secret Weapons of the Civil War, submarine expert and nautical historian Mark K. Ragan presents the untold story of the Singer corps. Poring through previously unpublished archival documents, Ragan also examines the complex personalities and relationships behind the Confederacy's use of torpedoes and submarines.