Ship History

Since prehistoric times, ships have undergone many changes. With 75 percent or three-fourths of our Earth covered in water, transportation by water is important. What do you think was one of the oldest known types of boats invented by humans?

A work of extraordinary range and striking originality, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen traces the global history of written constitutions from the 1750s to the 20th century, modifying accepted narratives and uncovering the close connections between the making of constitutions and the making of war. In the process, Linda Colley both reappraises famous constitutions and recovers those that have been marginalized but were central to the rise of a modern world.

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....

Young Daniel Arabus and his mother are slaves in the house of Captain Ivers of Stratford, Connecticut. By law they should be free, since Daniel's father fought in the Revolutionary army and earned enough in soldiers' notes to buy his family's freedom. But now Daniel's father is dead, and Mrs. Ivers has taken the notes from his mother. When Daniel bravely steals the notes back, a furious Captain Ivers forces him aboard a ship bound for the West Indies - and certain slavery.

In early 2020, the world was on edge. An ominous virus was spreading on different continents, and no one knew what the coming weeks would bring. Far from the hot spots, the cruise ship Zaandam, owned by Holland America, was preparing to sail from Buenos Aires, Argentina, loaded with 1,200 passengers—Americans, Europeans and South Americans, plus 600 crew. Within days, people aboard begin to fall sick. With only two doctors aboard and few medical supplies to test for or treat COVID-19, and with dwindling food and water, the ship wanders the oceans on an unthinkable journey.

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.

Experienced first-hand by two flies, the first and last voyage of Titanic becomes a fact-filled feast for listeners' senses and a kid-friendly trip through maritime history that listeners won't soon forget.

It is 1620. We Pilgrims do not agree with the Church of England and decide to sail to America which is known as the New World. Ahead of us is a wooden cargo ship with no sails. We see a wooden mayflower carved and painted on the stern or back of the ship. I wonder what the ship is called?

The Great Lakes have claimed countless thousands of vessels over the course of history, but its biggest and most famous victim was the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, the largest ship of its day to sail the Great Lakes and still the largest to lie below Lake Superior's murky depths. The giant ore freighter was intentionally built "within a foot of the maximum length allowed for passage through the soon-to-be completed Saint Lawrence Seaway."

From the acclaimed military history author, this action-packed World War II history describes the Allies' brutal naval engagements and daring harbor raids to destroy the backbone of Hitler's surface fleet.

The Snakehead is a panoramic tale of international intrigue and a dramatic portrait of the underground economy in which America's 12 million illegal immigrants live. Based on hundreds of interviews, Patrick Radden Keefe's sweeping narrative tells the story not only of Sister Ping, but of the gangland gunslingers who worked for her, the immigration and law enforcement officials who pursued her, and the generation of penniless immigrants who risked death and braved a 17,000 mile odyssey so that they could realize their own version of the American dream.

On May 19, 1942, during World War II, a German submarine, a U-boat, in the Gulf of Mexico stalked its prey 50 miles from New Orleans. The submarine set its sights on the freighter Heredia. Most onboard were merchant seamen, but there were also civilians, including the Downs family: Ray and Ina and their two children. Fast asleep in their berths, the Downs family had no idea that two torpedoes were heading their way. When the ship exploded, chaos ensued - and each family member had to find their own path to survival.

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.

The riveting story of one of the most calamitous voyages in Australian history, the plague-stricken sailing ship Ticonderoga that left England for Victoria with 800 doomed emigrants on board. For more than a century and a half, a grim tale has passed down through Michael Veitch’s family: the story of the Ticonderoga, a clipper ship that sailed from Liverpool in August 1852, crammed with poor but hopeful emigrants - mostly Scottish victims of the Clearances and the potato famine. A better life, they believed, awaited them in Australia.

Amid the constant rain of German bombs and the escalating violence of World War II, British parents by the thousands chose to send their children out of the country: the wealthy, independently; the poor, through a government relocation program called CORB. In September 1940, passenger liner SS City of Benares set out in a convoy of 19 ships sailing for Canada. On board were 90 CORB children, chaperones, and crew, along with paying passengers. When the war ships escorting the Benares to safe waters peeled off, a German submarine attacked and torpedoed the Benares.

Warship Builders is the first scholarly study of the US naval shipbuilding industry from the early 1920s to the end of World War II, when American shipyards produced the world's largest fleet that helped defeat the Axis powers in all corners of the globe. A colossal endeavor that absorbed billions and employed virtual armies of skilled workers, naval construction mobilized the nation's leading industrial enterprises in the shipbuilding, engineering, and steel industries to deliver warships whose technical complexity dwarfed that of any other weapons platform.

Sixty-five thousand tons, 280 metres long. A flight deck the size of 60 tennis courts. A giant piece of Sovereign British territory that's home to up to 50 aircraft. HMS Queen Elizabeth in the biggest ship in the Royal Navy's history and one of the most ambitious and exacting engineering projects ever undertaken in the UK. But it's her ship's company of 700, alongside an air group of 900 air and ground crew, that are Big Lizzie's beating heart. And How to Build an Aircraft Carrier tells their story.

For nearly 200 years huge wooden warships called “ships of the line” dominated war at sea and were thus instrumental in the European struggle for power and the spread of imperialism. Foremost among the great naval powers were Great Britain and France, whose advanced economies could support large numbers of these expensive ships. This book, the first joint history of these great navies, offers a uniquely impartial and comprehensive picture of the two forces - their shipbuilding programs, naval campaigns, and battles, and their wartime strategies and diplomacy.

From the authors of the number-one best-selling The Sea Hunters comes more unforgettable true adventures with famous shipwrecks.

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.