In this innovative study, Jun Kimura integrates historical data with archaeological findings to examine a wide array of eleventh- through nineteenth-century ships from China, Korea, and Japan. Chinese junks and Japanese sailing ships were known throughout the world, and this work illustrates why their innovative designs have survived the centuries. Kimura presents an extensive dataset of excavated coastal and oceangoing ships that traveled the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea. Three detailed case studies include the Shinan and Quanzhou wrecks and the Takashima underwater site. Using travel documents, cargo manifests, iconographic paintings, and other descriptive resources, as well as the archaeological evidence of hull components, wooden timbers, and iron remains, Kimura sheds new light on East Asian shipbuilding traditions.

This book provides a thoroughly researched biography of the naval career of Matthew Flinders, with particular emphasis on his importance for the maritime discovery of Australia. Sailing in the wake of the 18th-century voyages of exploration by Captain Cook and others, Flinders was the first naval commander to circumnavigate Australia's coastline. He contributed more to the mapping and naming of places in Australia than virtually any other single person. His voyage to Australia on H.M.S. Investigator expanded the scope of imperial, geographical and scientific knowledge. This biography places Flinders's career within the context of Pacific exploration and the early white settlement of Australia. Flinders's connections with other explorers, his use of patronage, the dissemination of his findings, and his posthumous reputation are also discussed in what is an important new scholarly work in the field.

Analyzing the rise and subsequent fall of international piracy from the perspective of colonial hinterlands, Mark G. Hanna explores the often overt support of sea marauders in maritime communities from the inception of England's burgeoning empire in the 1570s to its administrative consolidation by the 1740s. Although traditionally depicted as swashbuckling adventurers on the high seas, pirates played a crucial role on land. Far from a hindrance to trade, their enterprises contributed to commercial development and to the economic infrastructure of port towns. English piracy and unregulated privateering flourished in the Pacific, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean because of merchant elites' active support in the North American colonies. Sea marauders represented a real as well as a symbolic challenge to legal and commercial policies formulated by distant and ineffectual administrative bodies that undermined the financial prosperity and defense of the colonies. Departing from previous understandings of deep-sea marauding, this study reveals the full scope of pirates' activities in relation to the landed communities that they serviced and their impact on patterns of development that formed early America and the British Empire.

The Great Western is the least known of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's three ships, being overshadowed by the later careers of the Great Britain and the Great Eastern. However, the Great Western was the first great success, confounding the critics in becoming the fastest ship to steam continuously across the Atlantic, and began the era of luxury transatlantic liners. It was a bold venture by Brunel and his colleagues, who were testing the limits of known technology. This book examines the businessmen, the shipbuilding committee and Brunel and looks at life on board for the crew and the passengers using diaries from the United States and England. The ship's first voyage made headline news in New York and London and involved a race with the small steamship Sirius. The Great Western's maiden voyage was a triumph, and this wooden paddle steamer became the wonder of her age. She linked antebellum New York with the London of Charles Dickens and the youthful Queen Victoria. The ship continued to carry the rich and the famous across the Atlantic for eighteen years.

The story of Captain Scott's first expedition, by one who went with him. Louis Bernacchi's book Saga of the 'Discovery' is a comprehensive history of the fascinating ship which was built specifically for Antarctic exploration, and which was used intermittently for such purposes until the early 1930s, when she was given to the Boy Scouts Association. For the next 50 years the Discovery was a training ship for the Sea Scouts and the Royal Naval Reserve, moored on the Embankment in London. Then in 1986 the Discovery returned to Dundee, where she was built, and is now berthed at Discovery Point, where visitors can go on board, and learn the history of the ship in the adjoining museum. The book covers the ship's building in Dundee, its first - and most famous - expedition as Captain Scott's ship for his first foray to Antarctica, from 1901-1904, and its subsequent history up until retirement. Long after the return of Scott's expedition in 1904 the Discovery continued to serve the cause of Antarctic exploration, most notably when commanded by Sir Douglas Mawson on the B.A.N.Z.A.R.E expedition of 1929-1931. Bernacchi accompanied Scott on his first expedition. As the physicist, he was responsible for the scientific work, and here recounts the experiences, accomplishments, and setbacks they encountered. Also on that expedition were some of the legendary figures of Antarctic exploration: besides Captain Robert Falcon Scott himself, Dr Edward Wilson and Ernest Shackleton were to experience these harsh conditions for the first time, to be enchanted and enthralled, and enticed back to the continent with, for the first two, fateful results. Apart from recounting the various expeditions that Discovery accomplished, Bernacchi also provides a useful introduction to the wild life, flora and fauna of the region. Louis Bernacchi was the only person on Scott's first expedition to have prior Antarctic experience, having been amongst the first party ever to overwinter in Antarctica, from 1898 to 1900.

J.M.W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up (1838) was his masterpiece. Sam Willis tells the real-life story behind this remarkable painting. The 98-gun Temeraire warship broke through the French and Spanish line directly astern of Nelson's flagship Victory during the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), saving Nelson at a crucial moment in the battle, and, in the words of John Ruskin, fought until her sides ran 'wet with the long runlets of English blood...those pale masts that stayed themselves up against the war-ruin, shaking out their ensigns through the thunder, till sail and ensign dropped.' It is a story that unites the art of war as practised by Nelson with the art of war as depicted by Turner and, as such, it ranges across an extensive period of Britain's cultural and military history in ways that other stories do not. The result is a detailed picture of British maritime power at two of its most significant peaks in the age of sail: the climaxes of both the Seven Years' War (1756-63) and the Napoleonic Wars (1798-1815). It covers every aspect of life in the sailing navy, with particular emphasis on amphibious warfare, disease, victualling, blockade, mutiny and, of course, fleet battle, for it was at Trafalgar that the Temeraire really won her fame. An evocative and magnificent narrative history by a master historian.

The Egyptian sector of the Red Sea provides scuba divers with their finest opportunity to explore the most outstanding collection of shipwrecks found anywhere in the world. This newly revised edition of "Shipwrecks from the Egyptian Red Sea" explores nineteen of the most important and diveable shipwrecks many of which have not appeared before in any book. Additionally, there is a wealth of detail about many of the minor wrecks and a comprehensive list of more than 250 sunken ships in the area. Lavishly illustrated with both historic and up-to-date underwater photographs, each of the most important wrecks is rendered with the highest accuracy by eminent marine-artist Rico Oldfield. The product of nine years of research "Shipwrecks from the Egyptian Red Sea" brings to both scuba divers and shipwreck enthusiasts the most comprehensive, accurate and definitive work available.