Ship History

After Sir John Franklin and his ships disappeared in the Arctic while seeking the Northwest Passage, 39 rescue missions were launched, including one by the Resolute, the Royal Navy’s finest vessel. In 1854, it became locked in the ice and was abandoned. A year later, a Connecticut whaling ship discovered it drifting 1,200 miles away, a 600-ton ghost ship. The whalers boarded the Resolute and steered it through a ferocious hurricane back to Connecticut. The US government re-outfitted the ship and returned it to Queen Victoria, who, in 1879, had its best timbers made into a desk.

Marcus Rediker, one of the leading scholars of maritime history, puts his command of archival research on full display in this luminous portrait of the Atlantic waterfront as a place of conspiracy, mutiny, and liberation. Freedom Ship is essential listening for anyone looking to understand the complete story of one of North America's most significant historical moments.

Renowned as FDR's favorite warship, the cruiser USS Houston was a prize target trapped in the far Pacific after Pearl Harbor. Without hope of reinforcement, her crew faced a superior Japanese force ruthlessly committed to total conquest. But the men of the Houston fought back with dignity, ingenuity, sabotage, willpower, and the undying faith that their country would prevail.

Built of titanium and a chrome-nickel alloy known as Inconel X, the X-15 was the fastest plane ever built, streaking through the lower reaches of outer space even before the first space capsules reached orbit. First tested in 1959, the X-15 proved to be a crucial testing ground for the astronauts and hardware in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and even the Space Shuttle programs. Celebrated reporter Richard Tregaskis spent time with the pilots, engineers, and other key personnel involved in the project.

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.

In May 1942, Admiral Jack Fletcher's Task Force 17 closed in for the war's first major clash with the Japanese Navy. The Neosho, a vitally important tanker, was escorted by a destroyer, the Sims. The ships were attacked by Japanese dive bombers, and when the smoke cleared, the Sims had slipped beneath the waves. Scores of sailors were killed or wounded while hundreds bobbed in shark-infested waters.

The Mystery of the Casement Ship recounts one of the most extraordinary and explosive episodes of the Irish Easter Rising. In 1916, working with the Irish revolutionary Sir Roger Casement, Germany sent a captured British merchant ship disguised as a Norwegian tramp steamer named the Aud to Ireland to deliver guns and ammunition to rebels planning the Easter uprising.

The most horrific struggle of the American Revolution occurred just 100 yards off New York, where more men died aboard a rotting prison ship than were lost to combat during the entirety of the war. Moored off the coast of Brooklyn until the end of the war, the derelict ship, the HMS Jersey, was a living hell for thousands of Americans either captured by the British or accused of disloyalty. Crammed below deck - a shocking one thousand at a time - without light or fresh air, the prisoners were scarcely fed food and water.

Sailing across the Pacific, the battle-scarred heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis had just delivered a secret cargo that would trigger the end of World War II. Heading westward, she was sunk by a Japanese submarine. In 12 minutes, some 300 men went down with her. More than 900 other spent four horrific days and five nights in the ocean with no water to drink, savaged by a pitiless sun and swarms of sharks. Incredibly, no one knew they were there until a navy patrol plane accidentally discovered them. In the end, only 316 crewmen survived. How could this have happened - and why?

Deepwater archaeology uncovers secrets from the ancient maritime past...Thousands of shipwrecks and archaeological sites lie undiscovered in deep water, potentially holding important clues to our maritime past. Ships from the Depths surveys the dramatic advances in technology over the last few years that have made it possible for scientists to locate, study, and catalogue archaeological sites in waters previously inaccessible to humans. Søreide provides an introduction to and survey of the history, development, and potential of this exciting branch of nautical archaeology.

Between 1995 and 2007, the Republic of Ireland was the worldwide model of successful adaptation to economic globalisation. The success story was phenomenal: a doubling of the workforce; a massive growth in exports; a GDP that was substantially above the EU average. Ireland became the world's largest exporter of software and manufactured the world's supply of Viagra. But there were two big problems....

Built in 1927, the German ocean liner Cap Arcona was the greatest ship since the Titanic. When the Nazis seized control, she was stripped down for use as a floating barracks and troop transport. Hitler's minister, Joseph Goebbels, later cast her as a "star" in the epic propaganda film about the sinking of the legendary Titanic. In the Third Reich's final desperate days, when SS Cap Arcona was mistakenly bombed by the British Air Force, concentration camp prisoners packed the ship.

Heroines of Mercy Street tells the true stories of the nurses at Mansion House, the Alexandria, Virginia, mansion turned wartime hospital and setting for the new PBS drama Mercy Street. Among the Union soldiers, doctors, wounded men from both sides, freed slaves, politicians, speculators, and spies who passed through the hospital in the crossroads of the Civil War were nurses who gave their time freely and willingly to save lives and aid the wounded.

Disruption is upon you. This is the way out. A thick fog of disruption has rolled into your life. Maybe your entire industry just went into freefall. Or your business is struggling mightily. Perhaps your career path has been upended. Whatever your situation, the world as you know it has changed. You may feel despair, fear, even anger. You have no idea what to do next. Is there a way through this?

In 1968, a small, dilapidated American spy ship set out on a dangerous mission to pinpoint military radar stations along the coast of North Korea. Packed with advanced surveillance equipment and classified intelligence documents, the USS Pueblo was poorly armed and lacked backup by air or sea. Its crew, led by a charismatic, hard-drinking, ex-submarine officer named Pete Bucher, was made up mostly of untested sailors in their teens and twenties.

Join veteran submariner and decorated veteran of the submarine service Andrew Karam and the crew of the USS Plunger (SSN 595) as it goes up against the best of the Soviet Navy on an extended "special operation" in the waning days of the Cold War and find out what life at sea is really like.

This full account of USS Boise’s war not only gives us an insight into how one ship navigated a global conflict, but also an insight into the experiences of the men who served on her and a new perspective on the naval campaigns of the war.

This is the story of how, in Titanic's loss, 1500 souls were sacrificed to the "settled science" and "scientific consensus" of marine engineering. It is also the story of how the US and British loss enquiries were shaped by party politics, corrupted by corrupt politicians and the Marconi Scandal, tainted by the politics of Irish Home Rule, and - finally - salvaged by Oliver Wendell Holmes and the US Supreme Court, and by Lord Mersey's judgement in the Board of Trade Enquiry and the subsequent International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea.

From 1754 to 1755, the slave ship Hare completed a journey from Newport, Rhode Island, to Sierra Leone and back to the United States - a journey that transformed more than 70 Africans into commodities, condemning some to death and the rest to a life of bondage in North America. In this engaging narrative, Sean Kelley painstakingly reconstructs this tumultuous voyage, detailing everything from the identities of the captain and crew to their wild encounters with inclement weather, slave traders, and near-mutiny.

Desde los albores de la humanidad, el hombre ha intentado siempre hacerse a la mar ya sea para aprovechar sus recursos naturales, trasladarse con mayor rapidez, o utilizarlo como medio para conocer el mundo. Desde las primitivas barcas egipcias, pasando por las canoas tribales, las embarcaciones de totora inca, las carabelas, goletas, submarinos y las máquinas de vapor, la importancia de la embarcación en la existencia humana ha quedado plenamente demostrada.