Shrouded by myth and hidden by Hollywood, the real pirates of the Caribbean come to life in this collection of essays edited by David Head. Twelve scholars of piracy show why pirates thrived in the New World seas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century empires, how pirates operated their plundering ventures, how governments battled piracy, and when and why piracy declined. The essays presented take the study of piracy, which can easily lapse into rousing, romanticized stories, to new heights of rigor and insight. The Golden Age of Piracy also delves into the enduring status of pirates as pop culture icons. Audiences have devoured stories about cutthroats such as Blackbeard and Henry Morgan from the time that pirates sailed the sea. By looking at the ideas of gender and sexuality surrounding pirate stories, the fad for hunting pirate treasure, and the construction of pirate myths, the book's contributors tell a new story about the dangerous men, and a few dangerous women, who terrorized the high seas.

Can you remember why the sea is salty? How does the moon affect the tide? Where were Britain's most notorious places for smugglers? And what was the mystery of St Michael's Mount? There are almost as many stories about the sea as there are pebbles on the beach. Beside the Seaside is a book for anyone who has been captivated by the crash of waves on sand, thrilled by the exploits of pirates or delighted in an ice cream at the end of the pier. Answering such questions as what to look for in rock pools, which are the best knots and how to avoid being cursed by a mermaid, Beside the Seaside is bursting with facts, fables, history and mystery about Britain's seaside and coast.

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.

Submarines had a vital, if often unheralded, role in the superpower navies during the Cold War. Their crews carried out intelligence-collection operations, sought out and stood ready to destroy opposing submarines, and, from the early 1960s, threatened missile attacks on their adversary s homeland, providing in many respects the most survivable nuclear deterrent of the Cold War. For both East and West, the modern submarine originated in German U-boat designs obtained at the end of World War II. Although enjoying a similar technology base, by the 1990s the superpowers had created submarine fleets of radically different designs and capabilities. Written in collaboration with the former Soviet submarine design bureaus, Norman Polmar and K. J. Moore authoritatively demonstrate in this landmark study how differing submarine missions, antisubmarine priorities, levels of technical competence, and approaches to submarine design organizations and management caused the divergence.

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.