Maritime History & Piracy

The mutiny on HMS Bounty, in the South Pacific on 28 April 1789, is one of history's truly great stories - a tale of human drama, intrigue and adventure of the highest order - and in the hands of Peter FitzSimons it comes to life as never before. Commissioned by the Royal Navy to collect...

In this grand and thrilling narrative, the acclaimed biographer of Magellan, Columbus, and Marco Polo brings alive the singular life and adventures of Sir Francis Drake, the pirate/explorer/admiral whose mastery of the seas during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I changed the course of history...

New York Times Best Seller “Gripping…this yarn has it all.” (USA Today) “A wonderful book.” (Christian Science Monitor) “Enthralling.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) “A must-read.” (Booklist, starred review) A human drama unlike any other - the riveting and...

The story of the 16th-century’s epic contest for the spice trade, which propelled European maritime exploration and conquest across Asia and the Pacific.

In 1768 Captain James Cook and his crew set out on a small British naval vessel in search of a missing continent....

This first full-length biography about Anne Bonny and Mary Read explores their intriguing backgrounds while examining the social context of women in their lifetime and their legacy in popular culture that exists to the present day....

As he explodes many accepted pirate myths (i.e. "walking the plank" is pure fiction), Cordingly replaces them with a truth that is more complex and often bloodier....

THE #2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ‘As gripping as any thriller. History doesn't get any better than this’ BILL BRYSON ’A brilliant read … Game of Thrones but in the real world’ ANTHONY HOROWITZ PICKED AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 BY THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, THE GUARDIAN, THE DAILY MAIL AND...

A brilliant telling of the history of the common seaman in the age of sail and his role in Britain's trade, exploration, and warfare....

Set against the backdrop of the Age of Exploration, Black Flags, Blue Waters reveals the dramatic and surprising history of American piracy's "Golden Age" - spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s - when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond....

On the night of 14/15 April 1912, a 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.

The sea is the largest museum on earth, with more than a million lost ships resting in its depths. Those shipwrecks date back thousands of years, some from civilizations long vanished, others from more recent history. Some are famous, others obscure and unremembered but each has a story to tell.

“Thoroughly engrossing . . . a spirited, suspenseful, economically told tale whose significance is manifest and whose pace never flags.” —The Wall Street Journal From The New York Times–bestselling author of The Ghost Map and Extra Life, the story of a pirate who changed the world...

Triumphs and disasters in the deep sea This is a journey through time and water, to the bottom of the ocean and the future of our planet. We do not see the ocean when we look at the water that blankets more than two thirds of our planet. We only see the entrance to it. Beyond that entrance is a...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY CHICAGO TRIBUNE A thrilling adventure of danger and deep-sea diving, historic mystery and suspense, by the author of Shadow Divers Finding and identifying a pirate ship is the hardest thing to do under the sea. But...

Exploring the Britannic provides a revelatory and wide-ranging exploration of HMS Britannic—her life at sea and on the seabed.

The Shipwreck Hunter chronicles David L. Mearns' most intriguing finds. It describes the extraordinary techniques used, the detailed research, and the courage required to find a wreck thousands of feet beneath the sea, plus the moving human stories that lie behind these tragedies....

In the bestselling tradition of The Perfect Storm and The Finest Hours, “an exquisitely written and dramatic book…a literary page-turner” (Doug Stanton, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Horse Soldiers)—the 2015 mysterious disappearance of the SS El Faro, a gigantic American cargo...

The true, harrowing story of the ill-fated 1913 Canadian Arctic Expedition and the two men who came to define it....

In 1785, a young American named James Leander Cathcart is kidnapped at sea and carried as prisoner to the maverick North African statelet of Algiers....

Saved at the Seawall is the definitive history of the largest ever waterborne evacuation. Jessica DuLong reveals the dramatic story of how the New York Harbor maritime community heroically delivered stranded commuters, residents, and visitors out of harm's way....

Lighthouses are striking totems of our relationship to the sea. For many, they encapsulate a romantic vision of solitary homes amongst the waves, but their original purpose is much more utilitarian than that....

PIRATA - the action-packed novel of pirates in the Roman Empire in AD 25. Across the seas of the Adriaticum, pirates face mortal danger from wild storms, fight to hold their own against merciless rival pirates, and wrangle amongst themselves over hard-won treasure. While the Roman navy hunts...

It is impossible to understand our world today without understanding the last 100 years of Middle Eastern history. The history of the region in the 20th century is so varied and complex that it defies easy explanations....

From a brilliant Brookings Institution expert, an “important” (The Wall Street Journal) and “penetrating historical and political study” (Nature) of the critical role that oceans play in the daily struggle for global power, in the bestselling tradition of Robert Kaplan’s The Revenge of...