Ship History

A fascinating tale from the 1800s of young boys who were unfortunately wrecked in the ship Charles Eaton, of London, and lived for several years with the natives of the South Sea Islands. The remainder of the passengers and crew of this ill-fated ship were most inhumanly murdered by the savages soon after they landed from the wreck.

Profiles different kinds of ships, including triremes, Viking longboats, ships of the line, and more. Throughout the history of mankind, seafaring has played a pivotal role in trade, warfare, transport, and exploration. From the very first dug-out wooden canoes used by our ancestors, to the great ocean-going palaces that glide on the water today, ships have a rich history, and have played an important part in the development of mankind.

In November 1972, the Coast Guard Cutter Jarvis ran aground during a violent storm in Alaska, puncturing its hull, with a temporary patch applied to stop the flooding. The following day, enroute back to Honolulu, another, more vicious, storm struck; Jarvis now struggled with over 13 feet of water in their engine room and no power. The nearest ship that volunteered to assist was scheduled to arrive 30 minutes after the Jarvis officers estimated the ship would be destroyed on the rocky coastline. This is the true story of the heroic efforts by the crew that saved the ship.

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.

In 1956, a stunned world watched as the famous Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria sank after being struck by a Swedish vessel off the coast of Nantucket. Unlike the Titanic, this sinking played out in real time across radios and televisions, the first disaster of the modern age. Audiences witnessed it all: the unthinkable collision of two modern vessels equipped with radar; perilous hours of uncertainty; the heroic rescue of passengers, and the final gasp as the pride of the Italian fleet slipped beneath the Atlantic, taking some 50 lives with her.

Target Tirpitz is gripping WW2 storytelling at its best and a return to the RAF territory of Patrick Bishop’s bestselling Bomber Boys and Fighter Boys. The Tirpitz, Hitler’s greatest weapon, was reputed to be unsinkable and the battleship inflamed an Allied obsession: to destroy her at any cost. More than thirty daring operations were launched against the 52,000 ton monster.

Commanded by Captain Howes Norris, the Sharon headed for the whaling grounds of the northwestern Pacific. At Pohnpei Island, 12 men from the Sharon deserted the ship, leaving her critically shorthanded. After steering for New Zealand to recruit more crew, the men on lookout raised a school of sperm whales. Two boats gave chase, each with a crew of six. Five men were left on board the Sharon: Norris, three pacific Islanders, and a Portuguese boy named Manuel.

In November 1944, the U.S. Navy fleet lay at anchor in Ulithi Harbor, deep in the Pacific Ocean, when the oiler USS Mississinewa erupted in a ball of flames. Japan's secret weapon, the Kaiten - a manned suicide submarine - had succeeded in its first mission. The Kaiten was so secret that even Japanese naval commanders didn't know of its existence. And the Americans kept it secret as well. Embarrassed by the shocking surprise attack, the U.S. Navy refused to salvage or inspect the sunken Mighty Miss.

Perfect for curious young listeners, these eight titles provide exciting details about notable tragedies throughout history. Learn about the impact of catastrophes like the Titanic, Pompeii, the San Francisco Earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, the Hindenburg, the Great Chicago Fire, and Pearl Harbor in this complete collection of iconic historical moments. With an easy-to-listen-to narrative in each book, listeners will be able to quickly learn about the shock and aftermath of these disasters.

The sinking of the submarine S-51 was one of the greatest tragedies in American naval history. Due to a miscommunication and subsequent collision between the sub and a passing steamship on a September night, the S-51, including 33 of its crew of 36, sank to the ocean depths. The tragedy of the S-51 captivated the nation, and was a fixture in the pages of American newspapers. The story took on a whole new dimension when the navy decided to take over the salvage of the 1,000-ton behemoth from a civilian company.

For several centuries, fishermen on Lake Nemi in Italy could see ship wreckage on the floor of the lake, and in 1928, under the patronage of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, one of the most extraordinary archaeological recovery processes was begun to raise from the floor of Lake Nemi, a small volcanic lake in the Alban Hills some 30 miles south of Rome, two sunken barges that had lain half buried in the silt since the reign of the Roman Emperor Caligula.

America in 1775 was on the verge of revolution - or, more likely, disastrous defeat. After the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord, England's King George sent hundreds of ships westward to bottle up American harbors and prey on American shipping. Colonists had no force to defend their coastline and waterways until John Adams of Massachusetts proposed a bold solution: The Continental Congress should raise a navy. Meticulously researched and masterfully told, Give Me a Fast Ship is the definitive history of the American Navy during the Revolutionary War.

This is the harrowing story of one of the worst shipwrecks in Great Lakes history. In the early morning hours of November 29, 1966, the SS Daniel J. Morrell was caught in a deadly storm on Lake Huron. Waves higher than the ship crested over it, and winds exceeding 60 miles per hour whipped at its hull, splitting the 603-foot freighter into two giant pieces. Twenty-eight men drowned in the icy waters of Lake Huron, but one sailor - 26-year-old Dennis Hale - miraculously survived the treacherous storm....

On December 6, 1917, two ships collided in Halifax Harbour. One ship was loaded top to bottom with munitions and one held relief supplies, both intended for war-torn Europe. The resulting blast flattened two towns, Halifax and Dartmouth, and killed nearly 2,000 people. As if that wasn’t devastating enough, a blizzard hit the next day, dumping more than a foot of snow on the area and paralyzing much-needed relief efforts. Fascinating, edge-of-your-seat storytelling based on original source material conveys this harrowing tale.

Handsome and charismatic, Albert Hicks had long been known in the dive bars and gin joints of the Five Points, the most dangerous neighborhood in maritime Manhattan. For years, he operated out of the public eye, rambling from crime to crime, working on the water in ships, sleeping in the nickel-a-night flops, drinking in barrooms where rat-baiting and bear-baiting were great entertainments. Rich Cohen tells the story of this notorious underworld figure, from his humble origins to the wild, globe-crossing, bacchanalian crime spree that forged his ruthlessness and his reputation.

Explore the captivating history of the Titanic. When thinking about the worst known maritime disaster in history, it is impossible not to think about all of the lives lost in a single night. One of the wealthiest men alive (and the wealthiest passenger aboard the ship) died in the same accident that took the life of a baby younger than five months old in steerage. More than 100 years after the disaster, the survivors have passed on, but they left behind harrowing stories that remind us that every day is something to appreciate.

Lusitania: She was a ship of dreams, a microcosm of the last years of the waning Edwardian Era and the coming influences of the 20th century. When she left New York on her final voyage, she sailed from the New World to the Old. Yet an encounter with a primitive German U-Boat sent her and her gilded passengers to their tragic deaths.

When the United States was young, importing luxury goods from China was a secretive, glamorous, often brutal business - one where teas and silks and porcelain were purchased with profits from the opium trade. But the journey by sea to New York from Canton could take six agonizing months, and so the most pressing technological challenge of the day became ensuring one’s goods arrived first to market. Barons of the Sea tells the story of a handful of cutthroat competitors who raced to build the fastest, finest, most profitable clipper ships to carry their precious cargo to American shores.

It is the dawn of the 18th century, when girls stay home and sew while men sail the high seas finding adventure, danger, and gold. But two unusually adventurous girls (a rich merchant's daughter, Nancy Kington, and her former plantation slave, Minerva Sharpe) take to the high seas from Jamaica on a ship the crew renames Deliverance.

For more than 200 years, the wreck of the Whydah (and the riches that went down with it) eluded treasure seekers, until the ship was finally found in 1984 by marine archaeologists. The artifacts brought up from the ocean floor are priceless, both in value and in the picture they reveal of life in that much-mythologized era, changing much of what we know about pirates.