Great American Shipwreck Stories is a magnificent collection of gripping accounts of a ship's encounter with a great whale or an overwhelming monsoon or a disastrous passage through the Straits of Magellan, leading to a wreck and a crew's harrowing plight for survival on the open seas or on a desert island. Capturing all the elements of ancient and powerful tragedy, this book is chockful of thrilling tales of survival - as well as a frightful examination of man's darkest impulses - which allow the reader a gruesome glimpse behind the veil of honor and bravery that history often ascribes to such men of the sea. These are all stories that have endured the test of time, and have attracted discerning readers for generations. Includes stories by Joseph Conrad, Erskine Childers, Joshua Slocum, James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Richard Henry Dana, Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Hakluyt, Owen Chase, and many others.

When Daniel Collins and the crew of the Betsey set sail for Cuba in 1824, they have no idea of the horrors that lie ahead. This is just one of the stories in a collection of five true tales about pirates and shipwrecks that introduces readers to the perils of the high seas. Pirates and Shipwrecks: True Stories is the first book in the Mystery & Mayhem series for 9–12 year olds, which features true tales that whet kids’ appetites for history by engaging them in genres with proven track records—mystery and adventure. History is made of near misses, unexplained disappearances, unsolved mysteries, and bizarre events that are almost too weird to be true—almost! The Mystery & Mayhem series delves into the past to provide kids with a jumping-off point into a lifelong habit of appreciating history. Each of the true tales in Pirates and Shipwrecks, including stories about pirate Barbarossa and adventurer John Franklin, is paired with interesting facts about the setting, industry, and time period. A glossary and index provide the opportunity to use essential academic tools. These nonfiction narratives use clear, concise language with compelling plots, drawing in both avid and reluctant readers.

Containing almost a fifth of the world's fresh water, the Great Lakes system of Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario in North America are vast inland expanses, and subject to the same hazards for shipping more commonly found on the high seas. Since the seventeenth century, when the first wooden vessels of colonists and adventurers set a course across them, the lakes have claimed many ships as well as the lives of those unfortunates aboard them. Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes narrates the tales of over a hundred of them. From the dramatic stories of the many ships that have foundered with all hands in the great storms that can sweep across the lakes, to the tales of vessels like the Gunilda, lost because her wealthy master refused to pay a few dollars for a pilot, this book is packed with the fascinating narratives of Great Lakes disasters. Including photographs of the boats it is also a document of change and progress, showing how the ships have been developed over the centuries as well as the industrial cities and towns that have grown from the wealth brought by the shipping lanes of the lakes. From the griffon, which went down without a trace in 1679, to the more recent disaster of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which was ripped apart and sank with all twenty-nine lives onboard lost, Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes includes tales of courage and tragedy, stupidity and heroism. Inside find: The tales of over a hundred of the most famous shipwrecks on North America's Great Lakes, including the Edmund Fitzgerald, Daniel J. Morrell, Eastland, and many more. Fully illustrated with archival photography. Chronological listing of wrecks. Dramatic stories of the ships' last moments - the tragedies, courage, and the miraculous rescues.

Submerged stories from the inland seas The newest addition to Globe Pequot’s Shipwrecks series covers the sensational wrecks and maritime disasters from each of the five Great Lakes. It is estimated that over 30,000 sailors have lost their lives in Great Lakes wrecks. For many, these icy, inland seas have become their final resting place, but their last moments live on as a part of maritime history. The tales, all true and well-documented, feature some of the most notable tragedies on each of the lakes. Included in many of these tales are legends of ghost ship sighting, ghostly shipwreck victims still struggling to get to shore, and other chilling lore. Sailors are a superstitious group, and the stories are sprinkled with omens and maritime protocols that guide decisions made on the water.

Shipwrecks have captured our imagination for centuries. Here acclaimed historian Sam Willis traces the astonishing tales of ships that have met with disastrous ends, along with the ensuing acts of courage, moments of sacrifice and episodes of villainy that inevitably occurred in the extreme conditions. Many were freak accidents, and their circumstances so extraordinary that they inspired literature: the ramming of the Essex by a sperm whale was immortalized in Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Some symbolize colossal human tragedy: including the legendary Titanic whose maiden voyage famously went from pleasure cruise to epic catastrophe. From the Kyrenia ship of 300 BC to the Mary Rose, through to the Kursk submarine tragedy of 2000, this is a thrilling work of narrative history from one of our most talented young historians.

The Sunshine State has a rich maritime history spanning more than five centuries. Tragically, part of that history includes thousands of ships that have met their fates in Florida waters. Potentially more than 5,000 shipwrecks reside off Florida's 1,200 miles of coastline, with hundreds more lost in the state's interior rivers. In and of itself, the Florida Keys archipelago, consisting of approximately 1,700 islands stretching 200 miles, is littered with the remains of close to 1,000 shipwrecks. In fact, many features of the Florida Keys were named after various shipwreck events, such as Fowey Rocks, which earned its name after the 1748 wrecking of the British warship HMS Fowey, and Alligator Reef, where the schooner USS Alligator met her demise in 1822. Florida's Shipwrecks utilizes captivating images to illustrate dramatic stories of danger and peril at sea, introducing readers to a fascinating cross-section of Florida's shipwreck history.

This impeccably researched and “adventure-packed” (The Washington Post) account of the obsessive quest by Christopher Columbus’s son to create the greatest library in the world is “the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters” (NPR) and offers a vivid picture of Europe on the verge of becoming modern. At the peak of the Age of Exploration, Hernando Colón sailed with his father Christopher Columbus on his final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended in disaster, bloody mutiny, and shipwreck. After Columbus’s death in 1506, eighteen-year-old Hernando sought to continue—and surpass—his father’s campaign to explore the boundaries of the known world by building a library that would collect everything ever printed: a vast holding organized by summaries and catalogues; really, the first ever database for the exploding diversity of written matter as the printing press proliferated across Europe. Hernando traveled extensively and obsessively amassed his collection based on the groundbreaking conviction that a library of universal knowledge should include “all books, in all languages and on all subjects,” even material often dismissed: ballads, erotica, news pamphlets, almanacs, popular images, romances, fables. The loss of part of his collection to another maritime disaster in 1522, set off the final scramble to complete this sublime project, a race against time to realize a vision of near-impossible perfection. “Magnificent…a thrill on almost every page” (The New York Times Book Review), The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books is a window into sixteenth-century Europe’s information revolution, and a reflection of the passion and intrigues that lie beneath our own insatiable desires to bring order to the world today.