Marion's relationship with the ocean has been the defining element in the small town's development since its settlement as Sippican in America's colonial era. Since 1678, generation after generation of Marion families have relied upon the opportunities a port and sea provide in both life and industry. The waters of Buzzards Bay run deep in this coastal community, and its influence leaves an indelible mark not only upon every cove, beach, and inlet, but upon the very spirit of each resident and visitor. For many, the sea is a temperamental and dangerous mistress, and Marion's affair with her is no different, for this town has experienced both great gain in wealth and horrific loss of life and property by her hands over the centuries. In Maritime Marion, Massachusetts, readers take a remarkable journey across four centuries of struggle and prosperity as a simple coastal hamlet evolves into a celebrated nautical center for shipbuilding, fishing, and racing. This unique volume, containing over 100 black-and-white illustrations, chronicles the many aspects of maritime life, from trade to recreation, including the once-prominent whaling industry, the various local saltworks, the traditions of Tabor Academy, the influence of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, and the prestige of the Beverly Yacht Club. However, one of the greatest pleasures and customs of any seacoast community is its storytelling, and Maritime Marion recounts several of the town's most interesting and puzzling tales, such as the mystery of the Mary Celeste's lost crew, the tragedies of numerous hurricanes, the fate of the British warship HMS Nimrod, and the experiences of the first lighthouse keepers on Bird Island.

Marion's relationship with the ocean has been the defining element in the small town's development since its settlement as Sippican in America's colonial era. Since 1678, generation after generation of Marion families have relied upon the opportunities a port and sea provide in both life and industry. The waters of Buzzards Bay run deep in this coastal community, and its influence leaves an indelible mark not only upon every cove, beach, and inlet, but upon the very spirit of each resident and visitor. For many, the sea is a temperamental and dangerous mistress, and Marion's affair with her is no different, for this town has experienced both great gain in wealth and horrific loss of life and property by her hands over the centuries. In Maritime Marion, Massachusetts, readers take a remarkable journey across four centuries of struggle and prosperity as a simple coastal hamlet evolves into a celebrated nautical center for shipbuilding, fishing, and racing. This unique volume, containing over 100 black-and-white illustrations, chronicles the many aspects of maritime life, from trade to recreation, including the once-prominent whaling industry, the various local saltworks, the traditions of Tabor Academy, the influence of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, and the prestige of the Beverly Yacht Club. However, one of the greatest pleasures and customs of any seacoast community is its storytelling, and Maritime Marion recounts several of the town's most interesting and puzzling tales, such as the mystery of the Mary Celeste's lost crew, the tragedies of numerous hurricanes, the fate of the British warship HMS Nimrod, and the experiences of the first lighthouse keepers on Bird Island.

On December 4th, 1872, a 100-foot brigantine was discovered drifting through the North Atlantic without a soul on board. Not a sign of struggle, not a shred of damage, no ransacked cargo—and not a trace of the captain, his wife and daughter, or the crew. What happened on board the ghost ship Mary Celeste has baffled and tantalized the world for 130 years. In his stunning new book, award-winning journalist Brian Hicks plumbs the depths of this fabled nautical mystery and finally uncovers the truth. The Mary Celeste was cursed as soon as she was launched on the Bay of Fundy in the spring of 1861. Her first captain died before completing the maiden voyage. In London she accidentally rammed and sank an English brig. Later she was abandoned after a storm drove her ashore at Cape Breton. But somehow the ship was recovered and refitted, and in the autumn of 1872 she fell to the reluctant command of a seasoned mariner named Benjamin Spooner Briggs. It was Briggs who was at the helm when the Mary Celeste sailed into history. In Brian Hicks’s skilled hands, the story of the Mary Celeste becomes the quintessential tale of men lost at sea. Hicks vividly recreates the events leading up to the crew’s disappearance and then unfolds the complicated and bizarre aftermath—the dark suspicions that fell on the officers of the ship that intercepted her; the farcical Admiralty Court salvage hearing in Gibraltar; the wild myths that circulated after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published a thinly disguised short story sensationalizing the mystery. Everything from a voodoo curse to an alien abduction has been hauled out to explain the fate of the Mary Celeste. But, as Brian Hicks reveals, the truth is actually grounded in the combined tragedies of human error and bad luck. The story of the Mary Celeste acquired yet another twist in 2001, when a team of divers funded by novelist Clive Cussler located the wreck in a coral reef off Haiti. Written with the suspense of a thriller and the vivid accuracy of the best popular history, Ghost Ship tells the unforgettable true story of the most famous and most fascinating maritime mystery of all time.