Showing titles in Maritime History & Piracy

"...Damron's able narration carries listeners through this arduous journey with a steady tone that lightens at moments of joy and becomes grave at times of deep sadness and loss. While the tale has all of the trappings of a great adventure novel, neither the author nor Damron let listeners...

David L. Mearns has discovered some of the world's most fascinating and elusive shipwrecks. The Shipwreck Hunter chronicles his most intriguing finds. It describes the extraordinary techniques used, the detailed research, and mid-ocean stamina and courage required to find a wreck thousands of feet beneath the sea, plus the moving human stories that lie behind each of these oceanic tragedies. Combining the adventuring derring-do of Indiana Jones with the precision of a scientist, The Shipwreck Hunter opens an illuminating porthole into the shadowy depths of the ocean.

Set sail on a thrilling voyage into the mysterious and treacherous world of the notorious pirate, Blackbeard, in this riveting biography that unveils the man behind the legend. In Blackbeard, the high seas come alive as we chart the tumultuous life of Edward Teach, the infamous pirate who struck fear into the hearts of sailors and coastal communities alike.

Marking the centenary of the Titanic disaster, Titanic Lives is an utterly compelling exploration of the lives on board the most famous ship in history. On the night of 14 April 1912, midway through her maiden voyage, the seemingly unsinkable Titanic hit an iceberg, sustaining a 300-feet gash as...

The legendary explorer of the Titanic shares inside stories of danger, suspense, and discovery - plus previously untold stories about his own dyslexia and how it has shaped his life.

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. Shifting borders, governmental overthrows, ethnic and nationalist tensions, and political and economic forces on the world stage all had a hand in shaping the course of Middle Eastern history. Ultimately, however, the story is one of people searching for self-determination, from the stumbling alliances after the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the Arab Spring uprisings.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER & THE TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF 2021 'Astonishing and compelling' Bernard Cornwell ‘This superb book is like a classical symphony, perfectly composed and exquisitely performed’ THE TIMES Books of the Year Follow bioarchaeologist Cat Jarman – and the cutting-edge...

Brought to you by Penguin. Discover inspiring stories of heroism, adventure, endurance and survival from throughout history. Captain Robert Falcon Scott didn't start out life as a hero. In fact, as a boy he was considered small, frail and shy. So what was it that turned this ordinary man into a...

Brought to you by Penguin. Wreckers sinks the old narratives of imperialism, revealing the violent, chaotic and improvised reality of empire-building from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. While figures such as Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan are celebrated for...

Spices drove the early modern world economy, and for Europeans they represented riches on an unprecedented scale. Cloves and nutmeg could reach Europe only via a complex web of trade routes, and for decades Spanish and Portuguese explorers competed to find their elusive source. But when the Portuguese finally reached the spice islands of the Moluccas in 1511, they set in motion a fierce competition for control.

“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 Henry...

January 1972: the tiny outpost of British Honduras is threatened with imminent invasion by battle-hardened, US-trained Guatemalan paratroopers. Britain's response must be immediate and decisive. But there is only one deterrent the government can offer: HMS Ark Royal, once the navy's most powerful warship, now a white elephant on the verge of being scrapped. To save the small colony, she must launch a pair of Buccaneer fighter bombers on an unprecedented long-range mission. But first the old carrier must make a high-speed 1,500-mile dash across the Atlantic.

The vast expanse, unknown depths, dangers, and mysteries of the sea have led mariners to create fantastical stories of ghosts and monsters for centuries; it is a world strange and other to the experience of land dwellers. This body of lore has served to bond nautical communities together around the world and throughout history, with international stories fusing with local tales. The Perilous Deep explores why these stories were told, how they were repeated and mutated, and what fears, anxieties, and desires they helped to express.

It was an era when monopoly trading companies were the unofficial agents of European expansion, controlling vast numbers of people and huge tracts of land, and taking on governmental and military functions. The leaders of these trading enterprises exercised virtually unaccountable, dictatorial political power over millions of people.

LONGLISTED FOR THE CUNDHILL HISTORY PRIZE 'An acerbic, compelling and always accessible account of how opium corrupted the world' TLS 'The writing is sublime, the research thorough, the eye for story superb' Sunday Telegraph 'A history of the opium poppy, which probes how the drug trade has...

Madagascar's lost pirate utopia represents some of the first stirrings of Enlightenment political thought. In this jewel of a book, he offers a way to 'decolonise the Enlightenment', demonstrating how this mixed community experimented with an alternative vision of human freedom, far from that being formulated in the salons and coffee houses of Europe. Its actors were Malagasy women, merchants and traders, philosopher kings and escaped slaves, exploring ideas that were ultimately to be put into practice in by Western revolutionary regimes a century later.

Discover the “fascinating and outrageously readable” account of the roguish acts of the first pirates to raid the Pacific in a crusade that ended in a sensational trial back in England—perfect for readers of Nathaniel Philbrick and David McCullough (Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times...

Brought to you by Penguin. The riveting true story of a legendary Spanish galleon that sunk with over $1 billion in gold and silver—and one man’s obsessive quest to find it—from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Madhouse at the End of the Earth Roger Dooley wasn’t looking for the...

The growth of piracy led to a major surge in attacks in the Caribbean and along North America’s Atlantic seaboard. With the fragile maritime economy of the Americas threatened with collapse, major ports were threatened and trade brought to a standstill, the British government finally declared war on the pirates. The Pirate Menace draws on extensive research, as well as a wide range of first-hand accounts, to produce a new history of the heyday of historical piracy.

Brought to you by Penguin. If Britain's maritime history were embodied in a single ship, she would have a prehistoric prow, a mast plucked from a Victorian steamship, the hull of a modest fishing vessel, the propeller of an ocean liner and an anchor made of stone. We might call her Asunder, and...