In 1619, a group of thirty-two African men, women and children arrived on the shores of Virginia. They had been kidnapped in the royal city of Kabasa, Angola, and forced aboard the Spanish slave ship San Juan Bautista. The ship was attacked by privateers, and the captives were taken by the English to their New World colony. This group has been shrouded in controversy ever since. Historian Ric Murphy documents a fascinating story of colonialism, treason, piracy, kidnapping, enslave...

From its origination, Arlington National Cemetery's history has been compellingly intertwined with that of African Americans. This book explains how the grounds of Arlington House, formerly the home of Robert E. Lee and a plantation of the enslaved, became a military camp for Federal troops, a freedmen's village and farm, and America's most important burial ground. During the Civil War, the property served as a pauper's cemetery for men too poor to be returned to their families, and some o...

The first African-American aircraft carrier commander, Rear Admiral Lawrence Cleveland Chambers (1929- ) played a prominent role as captain of the USS Midway during the Vietnam War. During the evacuation of Saigon--known as Operation Frequent Wind--he famously ordered several UH-1 helicopters pushed overboard to make room for an escaping South Vietnamese Air Force major to land his Cessna. Chambers, who had only commanded Midway for a few weeks, gave the order believing (wrongly) that he w...

This attractive guidebook shows off just how rich our waterways heritage is. Picking out Britain's 50 most beautiful and interesting canals, Stuart Fisher gives a lively background to the history, wildlife, pubs and nearby attractions of each waterway. Each of the 50 chapters also features a map, colour photographs and a handy info box.Through the beautiful cities of London, Bath and Oxford, traversing stunning countryside and national parks, and exploring some of the best Victoria...

The historian R. H. Tawney famously wrote, ‘The sixteenth century lives in terror of the tramp.’ The eighteenth century lived in terror of the tramps of the seas – pirates. Pirates have fascinated people ever since. It was a harsh life for those who went ‘on the account’, constantly overshadowed by the threat of death – through violence, illness, shipwreck, or the hangman’s noose. The lure of gold, the excitement of the chase and the freedom that life aboard a pirate ship offered were judg...

Comfort is not a measureable quality, mainly because it means different things to different people. It also changes according to the weather, the time of year, the size of the boat, the distance from land, the prevalence of seasickness, and the state of the drinks locker. However, sound initial design, good building practice and, if necessary, modifications can make life afloat in cruising yachts immensely more convenient and comfortable than is frequently found. In this book Ian Nicolson ...

Environmentalists want industrialized nations to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that warm the atmosphere. For more than twenty years, however, their pleas have been mostly ignored. Naval architects and ship designers can play a critical role in reducing greenhouse gases by designing effi cient ships that are safe and environment friendly. New innovations would enhance fuel effi ciency and encourage other industries to adopt new ways of thinking. Ship designers are already working ...

After joining the Australian Merchant Navy at the age of sixteen, Dick Jolly trained as an engineer before joining the Australian National Line as a cadet. After a four-year apprenticeship, he gradually gained promotion while travelling around the Australian coast. Fascinated by the world of commercial deep-sea tugs and salvage, his first real break came in Portsmouth in 1963 when he landed a job on RFA Typhoon. Relocating to Singapore and with a Foreign Going tugmaster's qualification und...

In 1933, a young Canadian woman rejected the expectations of society and her upper-class family and became a crew member aboard one of the last great four-masted sailing vessels that still plied the ocean.It was not an easy task. Young Annette had to fight pressures from her family, rejection from schools of navigation, and doubts from ship owners. When she finally found a berth as an apprentice seaman, she faced hostility from officers and crew, who grumbled that she should be hom...

This trilogy tells how Ian Nicolson, yachtsman, naval architect and author, joined a Canadian and a Norwegian to sail the 45-foot ketch Maken from England via the Panama Canal to Vancouver, Canada. It goes on to describe how Ian returned home from Vancouver: how he hitch-hiked his way between Canada’s east and west coasts, via California; found the bare hull of a 30-foot, 6-inch yacht in a shipyard at Chester, near Halifax; finished the building and rigging of her in a few weeks with his o...

It wasn’t very long after the first commercially viable automobiles came on the scene that ambitious engineers began to dream of vehicles that could travel not only on land but also in the air, or by water. For a century, talented designers have created unique dual purpose vehicles for land, water and air (in various pairings) for both civil and military applications. Sometimes converted from standard vehicles, sometimes beginning as clean-sheet designs, these machines have met the enginee...

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution was established in 1824, and has a long and proud tradition of saving life at sea; nowhere is this more evident than in the south-east of England. The lifeboats and lifeboat crews from Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Kent have been involved in some of the most dramatic, courageous and daring rescues in the history of the RNLI, and this book provides details of all the famous rescues and the work of the lifeboats in the South East. The RNLI currently oper...