Sea Disasters

John Valliant's essay about the sinking of the Fantome, a Caribbean pleasure cruiser, during Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and the subsequent lawsuit. The disaster was the Atlantic’s worst sailing accident in over forty years.

Bouncing Back! is about rebounding from failure, poverty, illness, loneliness and tragedy. It is about discovering resilience we didn't know we had! It features stories of people who were broke, shattered, defeated — and they got back up. Author Andrew Matthews pinpoints 7 key things that resilient people do — that we can do too — and shares practical tips on how we can crush worry, build better habits — and think like happy people think.

On the night of February 18, 1952, during one of the worst winter storms that New England has ever seen, two oil tankers just off the shore of Cape Cod were torn in half by the force of the storm. This middle-grade adaptation of an adult nonfiction book tells the story of the shipwreck and a harrowing Coast Guard rescue when four men in a tiny lifeboat overcame insurmountable odds and saved more than thirty stranded sailors.

It's the summer of AD 79, and Flavia Gemina the sea captain's daughter -along with her friends Jonathan the Jewish boy, Nubia the African slave-girl, and Lupus the homeless beggar-boy - set sail for the Bay of Naples, to stay with Flavia's uncle near Pompeii. They are soon absorbing in trying to solve a riddle that may lead to treasure. But then tragedy strikes - Mount Vesuvius erupts and the children are fleeing for their lives from one of the worst natural disasters ever recorded.

Drawing on historical documents and contemporary accounts and on exclusive interviews with Carlsen's family, Delaney opens a window into the world of the merchant marine. With deep affection, and respect, for the weather and all that goes with it, he places us in the heart of the storm, a "biblical tempest" of unimaginable power. He illuminates the bravery and ingenuity of Carlsen and the extraordinary courage that the 37-year-old captain inspired in his stalwart crew.

Drawing on historical documents and contemporary accounts and on exclusive interviews with Carlsen's family, Delaney opens a window into the world of the merchant marine. With deep affection, and respect, for the weather and all that goes with it, he places us in the heart of the storm, a "biblical tempest" of unimaginable power. He illuminates the bravery and ingenuity of Carlsen and the extraordinary courage that the 37-year-old captain inspired in his stalwart crew.

The Narrows are the most shark infested waters of the Caribbean, a three kilometer wide strait steeped in folklore that exists between the islands of St Kitts and Nevis, upon which ships full of people risk passage every day. In 1970 the Christena ferry disaster claims the lives of over 233 passengers, and a young man named Marcus is part of the daring rescue operation, battling abnormally aggressive sharks and stormy seas to rescue victims.

On Shishmaref Island in Alaska, homes are being washed into the sea. In the South Pacific, small island nations face annihilation by encroaching waters. In coastal Louisiana, an area the size of a football field disappears every day. For these communities, sea level rise isn’t a distant, abstract fear: it’s happening now and it’s threatening their way of life. In The Rising Sea, Orrin H. Pilkey and Rob Young warn that many other coastal areas may be close behind.

Carl Safina has been hailed as one of the top 100 conservationists of the 20th century (Audubon Magazine) and A Sea in Flames is his blistering account of the months-long manmade disaster that tormented a region and mesmerized the nation. Traveling across the Gulf to make sense of an ever-changing story and its often-nonsensical twists, Safina expertly deconstructs the series of calamitous misjudgments that caused the Deepwater Horizon blowout, zeroes in on BP’s misstatements, evasions, and denials, reassesses his own reaction to the government’s crisis handling, and reviews the consequences of the leak.

On an August night in 1893, the deadliest hurricane in South Carolina history struck the Lowcountry, killing thousands—almost all African American. But the devastating storm is only the beginning of this story. The hurricane's long effects intermingled with ongoing processes of economic downturn, racial oppression, resistance, and environmental change. In the Lowcountry, the political, economic, and social conditions of Jim Crow were inextricable from its environmental dimensions.

On 1 October 2015, Hurricane Joaquin barreled into the Bermuda Triangle and swallowed the container ship El Faro whole, resulting in one of the worst shipping disasters in decades. No one could fathom how a vessel equipped with satellite communications, a sophisticated navigation system, and cutting-edge weather forecasting could suddenly vanish - until now.

In the tradition of The Perfect Storm, Sudden Sea hearkens back to a natural disaster that struck terror in the hearts of many. In this narrative, listeners experience the Great Hurricane of 1938, the most financially destructive storm on record.

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.

Consider this: Five of the most expensive hurricanes in history have made landfall since 2005: Katrina ($160 billion), Ike ($40 billion), Sandy ($72 billion), Harvey ($125 billion), and Maria ($90 billion). With more property than ever in harm’s way, and the planet and oceans warming dangerously, it won’t be long before we see a $250 billion hurricane. Why? Because Americans have built $3 trillion worth of property in some of the riskiest places on earth: barrier islands and coastal floodplains.

Rescue offers riveting stories about what happens when things go terribly wrong in some of the world's most perilous places: Himalayan peaks, African plains, vast oceans, remote Arctic wilderness. The result is a collection of first-rate prose read by masterful narrators that makes for compulsive listening.

Journalist Andrew Lewis chronicles the struggle of his New Jersey hometown to rebuild their ravaged homes in the face of the same environmental stresses and governmental neglect that are endangering coastal areas throughout the United States. Lewis grew up on the Bayshore, a 40-mile stretch of Delaware Bay beaches, marshland, and fishing hamlets at the southern end of New Jersey, whose working-class community is fighting to retain their place in a country that has left them behind.

On October 29, 1991, the 70-foot longliner Andrea Gail, on day 40 of an extended commercial swordfishing trip, was lost in a convergence of three powerful storms off Canada’s Grand Banks. Data buoys measured waves as high as 100 feet, and the boat was hit with winds measuring 80 knots (92 miles per hour). The Andrea Gail’s emergency beacon washed ashore that November on Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, but the boat and 6-man crew were never found. The crew left behind five children among them, and the entire small town mourned the loss.

There is a village that sits at the edge of lush rainforest, its stilted huts face the ocean, its children plunge below the water's surface with spears to learn the ways of their elders. This is the Surin Islands, on Thailand's Andaman coast, and home to the Moken, the world's last sea nomads. For centuries, the Moken roamed Burma's Mergui archipelago, diving for shellfish to trade for rice, taking shelter on land only during the monsoon season.

A magical tale of a seafarer's life in and around the town of Key West. A place that, if the tales aren't true, they "ought to be". Captain Eddie embarks on a day or two at sea, hoping to arrive at a safe harbor from an approaching hurricane. However, conditions rapidly deteriorate as the hurricane has spooled up to a category three and has taken a course directly for him and his lady.

La temporada perlera de Tuamotú había terminado y todos los que habían trabajado en ella regresaban a Tahití. Los seis pasajeros que disponíamos de camarote éramos compradores de perlas. Había entre nosotros dos americanos, un chino (el más blanco que he visto en mi vida) que se llamaba Ah Choon, un alemán y un judío polaco. Yo completaba la media docena.La temporada fue tan próspera, que ni nosotros ni los ochenta y cinco pasajeros de cubierta teníamos motivos para quejarnos. Las cosas nos habían ido bien y todos estábamos deseando llegar a Papeete para descansar y divertirnos.