Maritime English

During the height of the blizzard of 1978, the tanker Global Hope floundered on the shoals off the Massachusetts coast. The Coast Guard dispatched a patrol boat, but was soon in as much trouble as the tanker. Then pilot boat captain Frank Quirk, hearing of the Coast Guard's troubles on his radio, decided to act.

Admiral Stavridis, a leader in military, international affairs, and national security circles, shares his love of the sea and some of the sources of that affection. The Sailor's Bookshelf offers synopses of fifty books that illustrate the history, importance, lore, and lifestyle of the oceans and of those who "go down to the sea in ships." Divided into four main categories, Admiral Stavridis's choices will appeal to "old salts" and to those who have never known the sights of the ever-changing seascape, nor breathed the tonic of an ocean breeze.

The year 1809 starts out badly for Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, and his ship, HMS Sapphire. They've extracted the sick, cold survivors of Sir John Moore's army from disaster at Corunna, got hit by lightning while escorting the army to England, and suffered a shattered mainmast which may end Lewrie's active commission if a replacement can't be found or fashioned soon. Admiralty needs troopships, not slow, old Fourth Rate two-deckers, so Lewrie must beg, borrow, steal, and gild the facts most glibly if he wishes to keep her and her skilled crew together.

The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the 19th century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the 20th. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with 20 crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than 90 days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival.

Acclaimed South African writer Darrel Bristow-Bovey has a deeply personal relationship with the story of Endurance and in this lyrical, loving journey into past and present, into humanity and the natural world, above and below the Antarctic ice, he revisits the famous story from a contemporary perspective, wondering why it seems to mean more today than ever before, and exploring our changing relationship with ourselves and the ice, and with our shared story of survival.

Most times left solely within the confine of plantation narratives, slavery was far from a land-based phenomenon. This book reveals for the first time how it took critical shape at sea. Expanding the gaze even more widely, the book centers on how the oceanic transport of human cargoes - known as the infamous Middle Passage - comprised a violently regulated process foundational to the institution of bondage. Sowande' Mustakeem's groundbreaking study goes inside the Atlantic slave trade to explore the social conditions and human costs embedded in the world of maritime slavery.

For three millennia, the Mediterranean Sea served as the center of western civilization and the scene of many colossal wars and naval battles. In the early summer of 1940, this ancient body of water again played host to a new and extensive conflict as the Kingdom of Italy challenged Britain for dominance within the region. With France on the verge of collapse and Britain facing the prospect of imminent invasion, the Italians hoped to re-establish control over the Mediterranean.

On the fourth of July, 1942, four Allied ships traversing the Arctic separated from their decimated convoy to head further north into the ice field of the North Pole, seeking safety from Nazi bombers and U-boats in the perilous white maze of ice floes, growlers, and giant bergs. Despite the risks, they had a better chance of survival than the rest of Convoy PQ-17, a fleet of 35 cargo ships carrying $1 billion worth of war supplies to the Soviet port of Archangel - the limited help Roosevelt and Churchill extended to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to maintain their fragile alliance.

The war of 1812–1815 was a bloody confrontation that tore through the American frontier, the British colonies of Upper and Lower Canada, and parts of the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico. The conflict saw British, American, and First Nations forces clash, and in the process, shape the future of North American history. Carl Benn explains what led to America's decision to take up arms against Great Britain and assesses the three terrible years of fighting that followed on land and sea, where battles such as Lake Erie and Lake Champlain launched American naval traditions.

On May 29, 1914, after a collision in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Empress of Ireland sank in minutes, taking 1,012 passengers and crew to their deaths. The disaster shocked the world but then was forgotten with the torpedoing of the Lusitania and the engulfing cataclysm of World War I. Now, in Dark Descent, acclaimed author and diver Kevin McMurray revives the story of this forgotten maritime catastrophe.

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.

Two Years Before the Mast is Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s captivating account of life as a common sailor on board a merchant ship in the early 1830s. Dana captures the cruel conditions on board the ship, the injustices of merchant seamen at the hands of brutally unforgiving captains, and the treacherous icy weather at Cape Horn. An iconic maritime memoir said to have influenced Herman Melville, Two Years Before the Mast remains one of America’s greatest and most vivid seafaring tales.

Following the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713) a decade-long wave of sea-robbery plagued the Atlantic rim—often glamorized as the "Golden Age of Piracy". Boston-based laborer, Edward Low, left his mark on pirate history as the most vicious and sadistic raider of them all.

A century before Britain became involved in this terrible business, whole villages and towns in European countries were being depopulated by slavers, who transported the men, women, and children to Africa, where they were sold. This is the forgotten slave trade, one which saw over a million Christians forced into captivity in the Muslim world. Starting in the ancient world, Simon Webb traces the history of slavery in Europe, showing that the numbers involved were vast and that the victims were often treated far more cruelly than black slaves in America and the Caribbean.

The Royal Navy to which Admiral Lord Nelson sacrificed his life depended on thousands of sailors and marines to man the great wind-powered wooden warships. Drawn from all over Britain and beyond, often unwillingly, these ordinary men made the navy invincible through skill, courage and sheer determination.

We may think of "globalism" as a recent development but its origins date back to the fifteenth century and beyond, when seafarers pioneered routes across the oceans with the objectives of exploration, trade, and profit. These voyages only became possible after certain technical innovations—improvements in ship design, compasses, and mapping—enabled navigation across unprecedented distances.

Captain Thuridur, born in Iceland in 1777, lived a life that was both controversial and unconventional. Her first time fishing, on the open unprotected rowboats of her time, was at age eleven. Soon after, she audaciously began wearing trousers. She later became an acclaimed fishing captain brilliant at weather-reading and seacraft and consistently brought in the largest catches. In the Arctic seas where drownings occurred with terrifying regularity, she never lost a single crewmember. Author Margaret Willson reveals Captain Thuridur's fascinating story.

The Great Lakes shipping industry can trace its lineage to 1679 with the launching on Lake Erie of the Griffon, a 60-foot galley weighing nearly 50 tons. Built by LaSalle, a French explorer who had been commissioned to search for a passage through North America to China, it was the first sailing ship to operate on the upper lakes, signaling the dawn of the Great Lakes shipping industry as we know it today. Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakes is the most thorough and factual study of the Great Lakes shipping industry written this century.

The fearsome wrath of the storms that brew over the Great Lakes has challenged and defeated some of the staunchest vessels constructed in the shipyards of port cities along the US and Canadian lakeshores. Here Richard Gebhart tells the tales of some of these ships and their captains and crews, from their launches to their sad demises—or sometimes, their celebrated retirements. This volume is a must-hear for anyone intrigued by the maritime history of the Great Lakes.