VOYAGE BENEATH THE WAVES was published two years prior to Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Verne, when he became aware of Jules Rengade's serial version, felt obliged to write the magazine editor to set the record straight--HE'D developed the idea independently! In fact, the influence was very much the other way around: although Rengade had come up with the idea of an imaginary voyage of submarine exploration separately, he'd modeled his narrative style on Verne's, thus producing the first "Vernean" novel written by someone other than the great man himself. This is the first fictional use of a man-made submersible to explore the ocean depths--and it remains a very readable entry into the then-new genre of science fiction.

Capt. Edward “Ned” Latimer Beach, Jr. USN is known primarily for his bestselling novel Run Silent, Run Deep, which was made into a film in 1958 with Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster and his record setting voyage as commanding officer of USS Triton (SSN(R) 586), that was the first submarine to circumnavigate of the globe while submerged. A highly-decorated United States Navy submarine officer, during World War II, he participated in the Battle of Midway as well as other 12 combat patrols, earning 10 decorations for gallantry, including the Navy Cross. His career also offers insights into the inner workings of power, from inside the Pentagon in the years right after World War II, to inside of the Eisenhower White House, to the politics of the Republican Party in the United States Senate in the 1970s,. In addition to serving as an officer aboard U.S. submarines in the Pacific during World War II, he was a prolific author publishing two novels in addition Run Silent, Run Deep, as well as numerous works on naval history. Ned Beach is a biography that weaves together the personal, professional and writing life of a man who for many was the public face of the submarine community in the years after the Second World War. With a father, who was a naval officer and the author of thirteen published novels in the 1910s & ‘20s, as the eldest son Ned Beach was greatly influenced to follow in his father’s footsteps and to become both an officer and a writer. From his youth in Palo Alto, California during the Great Depression to his service in the Pacific in the war against Japan to the epic submerged circumnavigation of the globe in early 1960 commanding one of the early nuclear powered submarines, Ned Beach’s career encompasses a revolutionary period in American naval history. Not only did he experience it, he wrote about it. This book tells the story of his remarkable life, career and writing.

In this masterful account in the spirit of Bill Bryson and Ian Frazier, a longtime deep-sea diver masterfully weaves together the science and history of Earth's last remaining frontier: the sea. In an age of unprecedented exploration and innovation, our oceans remain largely unknown, and endlessly fascinating: full of mystery, danger, beauty, and inspiration. In Oceans Deep celebrates the daring pioneers who tested the limits of what the human body can endure under water: free divers able to reach 300 feet on a single breath; engineers and scientists who uncovered the secrets of decompression; teenagers who built their own diving gear from discarded boilers and garden hoses in the 1930s; saturation divers who lived under water for weeks at a time in the 1960s; and the trailblazing men who voluntarily breathed experimental gases at pressures sufficient to trigger insanity. Tracing both the little-known history and exciting future of how we travel and study the depths, Streever's captivating journey includes seventeenth-century leather-hulled submarines, their nuclear-powered descendants, a workshop where luxury submersibles are built for billionaire clients, and robots capable of roving unsupervised between continents, revolutionizing access to the ocean. In this far-flung trip to the wild, night-dark place of shipwrecks, trapped submariners, oil wells, innovative technologies, and people willing to risk their lives while challenging the deep, we discover all the adventures our seas have to offer -- and why they are in such dire need of conservation.

One of "The Most Fascinating Books WIRED Read in 2020" "One part science book, one part historical narrative, one part memoir . . . harrowing and inspiring.”—The Wall Street Journal How a determined scientist cracked the case of the first successful—and disastrous—submarine attack On the night of February 17, 1864, the tiny Confederate submarine HL Hunley made its way toward the USS Housatonic just outside Charleston harbor. Within a matter of hours, the Union ship’s stern was blown open in a spray of wood planks. The explosion sank the ship, killing many of its crew. And the submarine, the first ever to be successful in combat, disappeared without a trace. For 131 years the eight-man crew of the HL Hunley lay in their watery graves, undiscovered. When finally raised, the narrow metal vessel revealed a puzzling sight. There was no indication the blast had breached the hull, and all eight men were still seated at their stations—frozen in time after more than a century. Why did it sink? Why did the men die? Archaeologists and conservationists have been studying the boat and the remains for years, and now one woman has the answers. In the Waves is much more than just a military perspective or a technical account. It’s also the story of Rachel Lance’s single-minded obsession spanning three years, the story of the extreme highs and lows in her quest to find all the puzzle pieces of the Hunley. Balancing a gripping historical tale and original research with a personal story of professional and private obstacles, In the Waves is an enthralling look at a unique part of the Civil War and the lengths one scientist will go to uncover its secrets.

Follows the life of a giant prehistoric sea turtle.

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 Geography. 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, with trucking and railways that crisscrossed the continent serving as the primary modes of commercial transit. All that has changed, as nine-tenths of global commerce and the bulk of energy trade is today linked to sea-based flows. A brightly painted forty-foot steel shipping container loaded in Asia with twenty tons of goods may arrive literally anywhere else in the world; how that really happens and who actually profits from it show that the struggle for power on the seas is a critical issue today. Now, in vivid, closely observed prose, Bruce Jones conducts us on a fascinating voyage through the great modern ports and naval bases—from the vast container ports of Hong Kong and Shanghai to the vital naval base of the American Seventh Fleet in Hawaii to the sophisticated security arrangements in the Port of New York. Along the way, the book illustrates how global commerce works, that we are amidst a global naval arms race, and why the oceans are so crucial to America’s standing going forward. As Jones reveals, the three great geopolitical struggles of our time—for military power, for economic dominance, and over our changing climate—are playing out atop, within, and below the world’s oceans. The essential question, he shows, is this: who will rule the waves and set the terms of the world to come?