Maritime English

The most feared ship in Britain’s West Africa Squadron, His Majesty’s brig Black Joke was one of a handful of ships tasked with patrolling the western coast of Africa in an effort to end hundreds of years of global slave trading. Sailing after the spectacular fall of Napoleon in France, yet before the rise of Queen Victoria’s England, Black Joke was first a slaving vessel itself, and one with a lightning-fast reputation; only a lucky capture in 1827 allowed it to be repurposed by the Royal Navy to catch its former compatriots.

On the night of June 1, 1743, terror struck the schooner Rising Sun. After completing a routine smuggling voyage where the crew sold enslaved Africans in exchange for chocolate, sugar, and coffee in the Dutch colony of Suriname, the ship traveled eastward along the South American coast. Believing there was an opportunity to steal the lucrative cargo and make a new life for themselves, three sailors snuck below deck, murdered four people, and seized control of the vessel.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the United States led the world in negotiating one of the most important treaties in history: the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Through these negotiations the United States secured the largest area of maritime jurisdiction in the world—an area larger than the continental United States itself—and protected navigational freedom, so critical for Naval mobility. Today UNCLOS is in force for 168 countries and the European Union. Isolationist arguments, however, have for a quarter-century prevented the Senate from voting on the Convention.

Portugal, 1750s. Cecilia Lamb knew being a sea captain’s wife would mean a life of waiting and watching the horizon for her husband’s ship. But John has been gone longer than any voyage should last. Everyone else has given up hope of his return. But she knows in her bones that he is not lost. Gone, but not lost. Barely able to tear her eyes from the shimmering sea, she feels drawn to the sun-baked shoreline, and amid the bustle of the docks she feels certain that her husband will come back to her. Though along with that feeling is another sense – that something darker is coming.

Celebrated historian Diana Preston presents betrayals, escapes, and survival at sea in her account of the mutiny of the Bounty and the flight of convicts from the Australian penal colony. The story of the mutiny of the Bounty and William Bligh and his men's survival on the open ocean for 48 days and 3,618 miles has become the stuff of legend. But few realize that Bligh's escape across the seas was not the only open-boat journey in that era of British exploration and colonization.

There were few experienced swimmers among over 1,300 Lower East Side residents who boarded the General Slocum on June 15, 1904. It shouldn't have mattered since the steamship was only chartered for a languid excursion from Manhattan to Long Island Sound. But a fire erupted minutes into the trip, forcing hundreds of terrified passengers into the water. By the time the captain found a safe shore for landing, 1,021 had perished. It was New York's deadliest tragedy prior to September 11, 2001.

One of the largest, fastest, and most beautiful ships in the world, the Andrea Doria was en route to New York from Italy. Departing from the United States was the much smaller Stockholm. On the foggy night of July 25, 1956, 53 miles southeast of Nantucket, the Stockholm sliced through the Doria's steel hull. Within minutes, the sea was pouring into the Italian liner. Eleven hours later, she capsized and sank into the ocean.

In the best-selling tradition of Indianapolis and In Harm’s Way comes a “captivating...gripping” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) account of the USS Plunkett - a US Navy destroyer that sustained the most harrowing attack on any Navy ship by the Germans during World War II, later made famous by John Ford and Herman Wouk.

In the murky depths of the world's vast oceans lie the forsaken vessels of the damned, their spectral forms haunting the seas with malevolent intent. "Haunted Ships: And Their Malevolent Mysteries" delves deep into the eerie mysteries surrounding these ghostly behemoths, uncovering the chilling secrets that lurk within their decaying hulls.

From 1949 to 1950, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) made crucial decisions to establish a navy and secure China's periphery. The civil war had been fought with a peasant army, yet in order to capture key offshore islands from the Nationalist rival, Mao Zedong needed to develop maritime capabilities. Mao's Army Goes to Sea is a ground-breaking history of the founding of the Chinese navy and Communist China's earliest island-seizing campaigns.

During the peak of the Somali piracy crisis, three ships - from Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan - were hijacked and then abandoned to their fate by their employers, who lacked the money to pay ransoms. All would still be there, were it not for Colonel John Steed, a retired British military attaché, who launched his own private mission to free them. Author Colin Freeman, who has himself spent time held hostage by Somali pirates, takes listeners on an inside track into the world of hostage negotiation and one man’s heroic rescue mission.

Embark on an extraordinary journey beyond the ordinary with Sailing Beyond the Horizon: Captivating Facts About Cruise Ships. Get ready to dive into the alluring world of maritime leisure, as this captivating book unveils the fascinating stories, hidden wonders, and mesmerizing facts beneath cruise ships' glossy surfaces. Whether you're a seasoned cruise enthusiast or a curious traveler yearning to explore new horizons, this literary odyssey is your passport to unlocking the secrets of the high seas.

The ocean shapes our history. From the birth of humanity, oceans have separated and connected cultures. They have entranced and terrified generations. And they have shaped history in critical ways. Maritime trade. Naval warfare. Ocean exploration. Across the centuries, the ocean became a site for scientific advances and a highway for globalization. The Ocean Blue explores the way seas influence human history, from the ancient world to today.

The Moray Firth of Scotland has a fine maritime history. This audiobook introduces the nearly forgotten sealing and whaling industry of the 19th century. It includes ships, masters, men, and anecdotes from Fraserburgh and Banff, with a year-by-year breakdown of the industry. A recognized expert on the Scottish whaling industry, Malcolm Archibald has authored a number of books on the subject, including Whalehunters (Mercat Press, 2004), Ancestors in the Arctic (Black and White, 2013), and The Dundee Whaling Fleet (Dundee University Press, 2013).

For many years, thousands of people have walked past an unassuming black timber fishing boat bobbing in the water down at the wharves of Sydney's Darling Harbour. But appearances can be deceptive. This humble little trawler played a key role in one of World War II's most audacious and successful commando raids. In September 1943, fourteen young Z special operatives sailed the small fishing boat from Australia to Japanese-occupied Singapore. Battling deadly tides, fierce storms, hostile ships and detection from the air, this little ship and its crew made it to the heart of the enemy stronghold.

On July 4, 1861, the schooner S. J. Waring set sail from New York on a routine voyage to South America. Seventeen days later it limped back into New York's harbor with the ship's black cook and steward at the helm. While the story of that ill-fated voyage is one of the most harrowing tales of captivity and survival on the high seas, it has been tragically lost to history. Now reclaiming William Tillman as the American hero he deserves to be, historian Brian McGinty takes listeners on a courageous journey.

Experience first-hand the reality of life in the British Navy sailing from the Viking invasion of Anglo Saxon England to a young sailor’s grief at the death of Lord Nelson, from the Spanish Armada to the Battle of Jutland and from organised press gangs to murderous mutinies. Told entirely in the words of those who were there.

On January 25, 1917, HMS Laurentic struck two German mines off the coast of Ireland and sank. The ship was carrying 44 tons of gold bullion to the still-neutral United States via Canada in order to finance the war effort for Britain and its allies. Britain desperately needed that sunken treasure, but any salvage had to be secret, since the British government dared not alert the Germans to the presence of the gold. Lieutenant Commander Guybon Damant was the most qualified officer to head the risky mission.

This action- and suspense-packed novel by John Winn Miller introduces Captain Jake Rogers, a hardened smuggler transporting contraband through the U-boat infested waters of the North Atlantic in the beginning phases of World War II. He takes on cargo few other captains would be willing to carry—if the price is right. But after witnessing the oppression of Jews in Amsterdam, Rogers agrees to take on the most dangerous cargo he has ever transported.

This is the extraordinary story of the mutiny aboard the frigate HMS Hermione in 1797 (eight years after the mutiny on the Bounty) - the bloodiest mutiny ever suffered by the Royal Navy, which led to the extradition from America, and the hanging by the British, of the martyred sailor Jonathan Robbins. This event plunged the two-decades-old American Republic into a constitutional crisis and powerfully contributed to the outcome of the US presidential election of 1800.