A mammoth and sobering record, listing the tragically frequent disasters at sea between 1824 and 1962. The book, though daunting in size, is easy to use, giving an alphabetical list of every ship lost, with the circumstances of the sinking, and the technical data of each ship: length, beam, tonnage, speed, propulsion etc. This fascinating work of reference should be on the shelves or in the cabin of any maritime enthusiast.

When HMS Challenger sailed from Portsmouth in 1872, a young assistant ship's steward, Joseph Matkin, was among the crew. Throughout the three-and-a-half-year voyage, Matkin maintained a journal from which he composed the many letters he sent home to his family in England. In his letters he commented on oceanographic operations, reported on shipboard events of special concern to the crew, and discussed at length the history, geography, and peoples of the many exotic and remote ports at which the ship called on its famous circumnavigation of the globe. The Challenger expedition established the foundations of oceanography and is second only to Darwin's voyage aboard the Beagle for its contributions to nineteenth-century science. The massive quantity of specimens and information acquired was written up in the fity-volume series of Challenger Reports, and personal accounts were published by officers and scientists. No ocean voyage had ever been so well documented. Yet no account of the seaman's life "below decks" was known to exist until the early 1980s, when two substantial collections of Matkin's letters surfaced. The letters are unique in their perspective and fascinating for their depth and literacy. Matkin, the son of a printer, was well aware of the significance of the voyage and strove to present a learned account in a proper style. His letters convey a wealth of detail about shipboard logistics, the crew's attitudes toward scientific operations, and officer-scientist-crew relations. Unwittingly, Matkin also illuminates himself and the middle-class society of which he was a part. Matkin's letters, published here for the first time, bring freshness and immediacy to this great Victorian scientific enterprise. Philip F. Rehbock has edited and annotated the letters, providing a particularly readable work of travel literature for anyone interested in oceanography, voyaging, maritime social history, and naval affairs.

This is the annual edition of new studies of Shaw's life, influence and work.

There was a time in history when the sea was as important as the land for defining a country's social and cultural identity. Outrageous Seas is about that time, and about the harrowing, almost mythic, experience of shipwreck, near-shipwreck, and survival in waters off Newfoundland. Travellers from many walks of life - explorers and missionaries, traders, fishers and mariners, Native Peoples, aristocrats and immigrants - have left rare and fascinating first-hand accounts of such disasters. Their narratives span four centuries and touch many historical sub-themes such as the appeal of religion in times of crisis, gender roles, and the ocean-as-workplace. Apart from its obvious scholarly appeal, this collection evokes psychic responses to calamity and brushes with death, perhaps the most universal experience of all.

It began as a small, slow, and unadorned sailing vessel—in a word, ordinary. Later, it was a weary workhorse in the age of steam. But the story of the Edwin Fox reveals how an everyday merchant ship drew together a changing world and its people in an extraordinary age of rising empires, sweeping economic transformation, and social change. This fascinating work of global history offers a vividly detailed and engaging narrative of globalization writ small, viewed from the decks and holds of a single vessel. The Edwin Fox connected the lives and histories of millions, though most never even saw it. Built in Calcutta in 1853, the Edwin Fox was chartered by the British navy as a troop transport during the Crimean War. In the following decades, it was sold, recommissioned, and refitted by an increasingly far-flung constellation of militaries and merchants. It sailed to exotic ports carrying luxury goods, mundane wares, and all kinds of people: not just soldiers and officials but indentured laborers brought from China to Cuba, convicts and settlers being transported from the British Empire to western Australia and New Zealand—with dire consequences for local Indigenous peoples—and others. But the power of this story rests in the everyday ways people, nations, economies, and ideas were knitted together in this foundational era of our modern world.

A highly illustrated voyage through shipwrecks ancient and contemporary. Out of the Depths explores all aspects of shipwrecks across four thousand years, examining their historical context and significance, showing how shipwrecks can be time capsules, and shedding new light on long-departed societies and civilizations. Alan G. Jamieson not only informs readers of the technological developments over the last sixty years that have made the true appreciation of shipwrecks possible, but he also covers shipwrecks in culture and maritime archaeology, their appeal to treasure hunters, and their environmental impacts. Although shipwrecks have become less common in recent decades, their implications have become more wide-ranging: since the 1960s, foundering supertankers have caused massive environmental disasters, and in 2021, the blocking of the Suez Canal by the giant container ship Ever Given had a serious effect on global trade.