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 breadfruit plants from Tahiti and take them to the West Indies, the Bounty's crew found themselves in a tropical paradise. Five months later, they did not want to leave.

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Ghost Map and Extra Life, the story of a pirate who changed the world....

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.

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.

Between 1606 and 1688, while the British had their hands full with the Gunpowder Plot and the English Civil War, it was highly skilled Dutch seafarers who mapped the land masses....

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

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....

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....

What was daily life in Nelson's navy really like, for everyone from the captain down to the rawest recruit? What did they eat? What songs did they sing? What was the schedule of watches? How were the officers and crew paid, and what was the division of prize-money? Find out....

Frequently depicted as “Scandinavian scavengers”, warlike pirates, raiders, and invaders, the Vikings have lately surfaced from the depths of history to become pop culture’s most adored ruffians. For Prof. Fee, this recent craze for all things Viking is a mixed blessing....

A century before Britain became involved in this terrible business, whole villages and towns in England, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and other European countries were being depopulated by slavers, who transported the men, women, and children to Africa, where they were sold....

The Titanic. The Britannic. The Olympic. They are some of the most famous ships in history, but for the wrong reasons.

He gathered his crew of four, readied his 49-foot steel boat, the Can Do, and entered the maelstrom of the blizzard that was to become known as the "Storm of the Century"....

Captain William Kidd stands as one of the most notorious "pirate" outlaws ever, but his legend is tainted by a bed of lies. Having captivated imaginations for more than three hundred years and inspired many stories about pirates, troubling questions remain.

Finding and identifying a pirate ship is the hardest thing to do under the sea. But two men—John Chatterton and John Mattera—are willing to risk everything to find the Golden Fleece, the ship of the infamous pirate Joseph Bannister....

Celebrated historian Diana Preston presents betrayals, escapes, and survival at sea in her account of the mutiny of the Bounty and the flight of convicts from the Australian penal colony....

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

The year is 1680, in the heart of the Golden Age of Piracy, and more than 300 daring, hardened pirates—a potent mix of low-life scallywags and a rare breed of gentlemen buccaneers—gather on a remote Caribbean island....

The Stolen Village is a fascinating tale of international piracy and culture clash nearly 400 years ago and is the first book to cover this relatively unknown and under-researched incident in Irish history....

This is the little-known story of how a newly independent nation was challenged by four Muslim powers and what happened when America's third president decided to stand up....

For centuries, oceans were the chessboard on which empires battled for supremacy. But in the nuclear age, air power and missile systems dominated our worries about security, and for the United States, the economy was largely driven by domestic production....

On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis is sailing alone in the Philippine Sea when she is sunk by two Japanese torpedoes. For the next five nights, almost 300 miles from the nearest land, nearly 900 men battle injuries, sharks, dehydration, insanity, and eventually each other....

The history of the Golden Age of Piracy, the one that has shaped the modern conception of a pirate, is complex and long, with lots of information to cover....

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....

The Royal Navy to which Admiral Lord Nelson sacrificed his life depended on thousands of sailors and marines to man the great wind-powered wooden warships....