The waters of coastal Virginia swirl with tales both tragic and heroic. Join Virginia Beach native Alpheus Chewning as he recounts harrowing stories of storms at sea, loss of life and fortune and the heroism of the United States Life-Saving Service. Marvel at the blunders and bungles that have plagued the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and learn about the U-boats that lurked off the coast during World War II. Extensively researched and filled with fascinating details, Virginia Beach Shipwrecks is a treasure for sea lovers of all ages.

Featuring the accounts of twenty-five ill-starred vessels -- some notorious and some forgotten until now -- this anthology provides a fascinating history of a local maritime culture and charts how the catastrophic events along the Delmarva coast significantly affected U.S. merchant shipping as a whole.

From January to July 1942, more than seventy-five ships sank to North Carolina's "Graveyard of the Atlantic" off the coast of the Outer Banks. German U-boats sank ships in some of the most harrowing sea fighting close to America's shore. Germany's Operation Drumbeat, led by Admiral Karl Donitz, brought fear to the local communities. A Standard oil tanker sank just sixty miles from Cape Hatteras. The U-85 was the first U-boat sunk by American surface forces, and local divers later discovered a rare Enigma machine aboard. Author Jim Bunch traces the destructive history of world war on the shores of the Outer Banks.

Virginia has more shipwrecks than any other state in the continental United States. With 112 miles of Atlantic coast, Virginia includes almost half of the Chesapeake Bay and many major tributaries: the Lynnhaven River, the Elizabeth River, the James River, the York River, and the Rappahannock River. Since the Jamestown settlement in 1607, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of military and merchant vessels have sailed through "the Capes," an important economic lifeline linking the United States to the rest of the world. With 3,315 miles of tidal coastline and natural enemies such as water, fire, wind, age, and human fallibility, countless ships and lives have been lost. Virginia Shipwrecks vividly illustrates their story. Alpheus J. Chewning was born and raised in Virginia and has spent many years fishing and sailing on the Chesapeake Bay. In his 27-year career with the Virginia Beach Fire Department, he served several years assigned to the city's first fireboat. He was on the board of advisors of the Virginia Beach Maritime Historical Museum and now serves on the Princess Anne County/Virginia Beach Historical Society Board of Governors.

Based on the exceptional and fascinating eyewitness account of a 17th century Spanish padre, Dave Horner's Shipwreck is the absorbing and true story of two immense galleons that were lost (along with hundreds of passengers and millions of pesos in treasure) to disasters at sea. Shipwreck is an extraordinary literary adventure which interweaves accounts of the many attempts throughout the past three centuries to recover the sunken treasure, including the recent discovery and salvage of one of the galleons by Dave Horner himself. Shipwreck is an outstanding history of true adventure on the high seas, past and present, which is wonderfully enhanced for the reader with 50 photographic illustrations, six maps, four line drawings, seven appendices, as well as bibliographies of archival sources, institutions, original documents or primary works, and a general listing of thematically appropriate titles for further suggested readings.

"A vivid historical account…Thompson shines in giving a sense of what it means to love a place that's been designated a 'sacrifice zone.'" ​ —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Award–winning investigative environmental journalist Jonathan P. Thompson digs into the science, politics, and greed behind the 2015 Gold King Mine disaster, and unearths a litany of impacts wrought by a century and a half of mining, energy development, and fracking in southwestern Colorado. Amid these harsh realities, Thompson explores how a new generation is setting out to make amends. JONATHAN THOMPSON is a native Westerner with deep roots in southwestern Colorado. He has been an environmental journalist focusing on the American West since he signed on as reporter and photographer at the Silverton Standard & the Miner newspaper in 1996. He has worked and written for High Country News for over a decade, serving as editor–in–chief from 2007 to 2010. He was a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and in 2016 he was awarded the Society of Environmental Journalists' Outstanding Beat Reporting, Small Market. He currently lives in Bulgaria with his wife Wendy and daughters Lydia and Elena.