In June 1898, three years and two months after departing Boston in his aged oyster sloop Spray, Captain Joshua Slocum made land fall in New England and became the first person ever to sail alone around the world. The voyage capped a lifetime of adventure for the indomitable Slocum, who had advanced from seaman to captain during the challenging final years of commercial sail, surviving hurricanes, mutinies, shipwreck, and the death at sea of his beloved first wife, Virginia. Sailing Alone A...

Since 2004, award-winning author and historian Stan Grayson has regularly contributed stories to WoodenBoat magazine about the many yachts, small craft, designers, boat builders, and sailors who have captured his imagination. This collection of twenty articles from Grayson and the pages of WoodenBoat presents a wide-ranging and insightful account of American yachting history and some of its fascinating characters.Readers will voyage back to the early days of the f...

**From the author of Mayflower, Valiant Ambition, and In the Hurricane's Eye--the riveting bestseller tells the story of the true events that inspired Melville's Moby-Dick.Winner of the National Book Award, Nathaniel Philbrick's book is a fantastic saga of survival and adventure, steeped in the lore of whaling, with deep resonance in American literature and history.In 1820, the whaleship Essex was rammed and sunk by an angry sper...

"[U]ndeniably one of the greatest stories of a bygone era." - Wall Street JournalThe true story of the first female captain of a merchant ship and her treacherous navigation of Antarctica's deadly waters, from the New York Times bestselling author of *The Widow ClicquotSummer, 1856*Nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Patten and her husband, Joshua, were young and ambitious. Both from New En...

"Kirkus Reviews" summarized: "Maritime historian Powers ("Treasure Ship" and others) offers a series of vignettes from the golden age of American marine salvage. It extended from the end of the Civil War to the decade following World War I. Sail was merging with steam, wooden hulls with iron ones, but as the nation expanded westward in the wake of the Forty-Niners, the burgeoning demand for commercial transport, in advance of creeping railroads, put all manner of ships to work under good m...

First published in 1912. "A Detailed and Accurate Account of the Most Awful Marine Disaster in History, Constructed from the Real Facts as Obtained from Those on Board Who Survived… INCLUDING Records of Previous Great Disasters of the Sea, Descriptions of the Developments of Safety and Life-saving Appliances, a Plain Statement of the Causes of Such Catastrophes and How to Avoid Them, the Marvelous Development of Shipbuilding, etc." According to Wikipedia: "Logan Mars...

The classic travel narrative of a Don Quixote-of-the-seas – the first man to circumnavigate the world singlehandedly.Joshua Slocum’s autobiographical account of his solo trip around the world is one of the most remarkable – and entertaining – travel narratives of all time. Setting off alone from Boston aboard the thirty-six-foot wooden sloop Spray in April 1895, Captain Slocum went on to join the ranks of the world’s great circumnavigators – Magellan, Drak...

**A Los Angeles Times Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007A Boston Globe Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007Amazon.com Editors pick as one of the 10 best history books of 2007Winner of the 2007 John Lyman Award for U. S. Maritime History, given by the North American Society for Oceanic History"The best history of American whaling to come along in a generation." —Nathaniel Philbrick**The epic history of the "iron men in wooden boats" who built an in...

Critically acclaimed nonfiction author Deborah Hopkinson pieces together the story of the TITANIC and that fateful April night, drawing on the voices of survivors and archival photographs.In this award-winning book, critically acclaimed author Deborah Hopkinson weaves together the voices and stories of real TITANIC survivors and witnesses to the disaster -- from the stewardess Violet Jessop to Captain Arthur Rostron of the CARPATHIA, who came to the rescue of the sinking ship. Pack...

Published only months after the disaster and sold as a “Memorial Edition,” this is one of the most sensationalistic early books about the sinking of the Titanic. It contains a multitude of survivor accounts, taken from newspaper stories, personal interviews, and reports of the Senate investigation. Much of the early reporting – for example, that the Titanic exploded and broke in two before she sank – is now known to be untrue, but the raw horror of the disaster remains in the rush and jumb...

**Fascinating firsthand accounts of the Titanic—in a deluxe package with gorgeous graphic cover artThe Titanic, First Accounts graphic deluxe edition compiles first hand accounts, testimonies, and letters by notable Titanic survivors, including Archibald Gracie, Lawrence Beesley, Elizabeth W. Shutes, and the "unsinkable" Molly Brown. Full of historically accurate details and an afterword by the grandson of Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivors and author of...

The true story of Canada's greatest sailor, the first to sail around the world single-handedly.When Joshua Slocum sailed into port in Massachusetts on June 27, 1898, he was the first man ever to have completed a voyage around the world without technology, money or companion. It took him three years to cover the 46,000 miles, and along the way he was chased by pirates, buffeted by storms, and narrowly escaped death by sharks. When a goat ate his charts, he managed to navigate throug...