Maritime English

On May 28, 1914, the RMS Empress of Ireland began her 192nd trip across the Atlantic from Quebec City, Canada, en route to Liverpool, England, carrying 1,056 passengers and a crew of 423. In the early hours of May 29, fog descended on the St. Lawrence River, and the ocean liner was rammed by the Storstad, a Norwegian coal ship. In the fourteen minutes it took for the Empress of Ireland to sink, there was time to launch only four of the forty lifeboats, and rather than women and children first, it was everyone for themselves.

Combining a ship finance textbook with a jet setting geopolitical romp, Viking Raid picks up where The Shipping Man left off – on a journey into the famously private world of international shipping tycoons and their financiers. At the conclusion of The Shipping Man, Robert Fairchild is sipping rosé on the Côte d’Azur with Coco Jacobsen and toasting to the success of their $300 million junk bond offering; six months later the CEO is in the 120-degree engine room of a supertanker discharging two million barrels of Saudi crude oil – afraid for his job and afraid for his life. Fortunes ...

"The right of a citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon in the ordinary course of life and business is a common right which he has under his right to enjoy life and liberty, to acquire and possess property, and to pursue happiness and safety. It includes the right in so doing to use the ordinary and usual conveyances of the day; and under the existing modes of travel includes the right to drive a horse-drawn carriage or wagon thereon, or to operate an automobile thereon, for the usual and ordinary purposes of life and business. It is not a mere ...

A historical fiction book set in Cape Cod during the early 20th century. "Whispers of Cape Cod" whisks readers away to the windswept shores of Big Wreck Cove, weaving a tale marked by resilience, redemption, and the unbreakable bonds of community. In this deeply moving saga, delve into the twilight days of Captain Ira Ball and his ever-concerned wife, Prudence. Their struggle with the ailments of old age and the pressing need for assistance is brought to life with vivid descriptions, making their world tangible. Enter Sheila Macklin, a young woman disguising herself as their lost niece. ...

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.

Captain William Kidd stands as one of the most notorious "pirate" outlaws ever, but his legend is tainted by a bed of lies. Having captivated imaginations for more than three hundred years and inspired many stories about pirates, troubling questions remain. Was he really a criminal or is the truth more inconvenient: that he was a buccaneer's worst nightmare, a revered pirate hunter turned fall guy for scheming politicians?

The Great Lakes shipping industry can trace its lineage to 1679 with the launching on Lake Erie of the Griffon, a 60-foot galley weighing nearly 50 tons. Built by LaSalle, a French explorer who had been commissioned to search for a passage through North America to China, it was the first sailing ship to operate on the upper lakes, signaling the dawn of the Great Lakes shipping industry as we know it today. Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakes is the most thorough and factual study of the Great Lakes shipping industry written this century.

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.

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.

The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the 19th century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the 20th. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with 20 crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than 90 days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival.

A thrilling adventure set in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean during the early 20th century. Set against the backdrop of tumultuous seas, Terror at Sea is a harrowing tale of survival and heroism. The story begins with the San Martin, captained by Antonio Perez, journeying from Realejo to Tahiti. Among the five passengers are Mr. McKay, his son Andy, Terence Donaghue, Fanshaw Ellerton, and Quexo, a young ranch worker. The group finds themselves aboard the aging steamer due to Mr. McKay’s injury during a Central American revolution. As the steamer plods along, it falls into a fierce ...

Acclaimed South African writer Darrel Bristow-Bovey has a deeply personal relationship with the story of Endurance and in this lyrical, loving journey into past and present, into humanity and the natural world, above and below the Antarctic ice, he revisits the famous story from a contemporary perspective, wondering why it seems to mean more today than ever before, and exploring our changing relationship with ourselves and the ice, and with our shared story of survival.

On June 19, 1864, just off the coast of France, one of the most dramatic naval battles in history took place. On a clear day with windswept skies, the dreaded Confederate raider Alabama faced the Union warship Kearsarge in an all-or-nothing fight to the finish, the outcome of which would effectively end the threat of the Confederacy on the high seas.

1812. Arriving back in England after his successes in the Adriatic, Captain Sir Thomas Kydd is bestowed with honours. In London, he's greeted by the Prince Regent, who, despite Kydd's protestations that he's happy with his present command, insists he be given a bigger ship - HMS Thunderer, a 74-gun ship of the line. But she's old, and being part of a standing fleet, Kydd's chances of further fame and distinction are slim indeed.

HARD AGROUND is more than the story of a racing yacht running aground in the vast, merciless expanse of the Indian Ocean. It is a deep dive into the collision between human ambition and the untamable sea — where cutting-edge technology meets the raw, unpredictable power of nature. In the 2014–15 Volvo Ocean Race, the Vestas Wind was a sleek, cutting-edge machine, helmed by some of the world’s most skilled sailors. Yet, despite every precaution, the boat ran hard aground on a hidden reef — a navigational nightmare that exposed the brittle underbelly of modern offshore racing. With ...

For just over a decade, from 1956 to 1967, a collection of dilapidated former sail-making warehouses clustered at the lower tip of Manhattan became the quiet epicenter of the art world.

The history and operations of the Panama Canal during the 1980s and 1990s come to life in this vibrant personal memoir by retired canal pilot Kenneth P. Puckett. In this book, Captain Puckett shares "sea stories" and other personal memories that have made him a popular teacher and lecturer. For nearly 16 years, until he retired in 1996, he helped to guide ships through the historic Panama Canal on more than 1,400 transits. On these pages he navigates through tales of his rocky childhood in northern Kentucky; his military adventures in both the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army, where he served two ...

This book is an account of ships that have borne the name Queen of the Lakes, an honorary title indicating that, at the time of its launching, a ship is the longest on the Great Lakes. In one of the most comprehensive books ever written on the maritime history of the lakes, Mark Thompson presents a vignette of each of the dozens of ships that have held the title, chronicling the dates the ship sailed, its dimensions, the derivation of its name, its role in the economic development of the region, and its sailing history.

Even if we live within sight of the sea, it is easy to forget that our world is an ocean world. The open ocean, that vast expanse of international waters, begins just a few miles out and spreads across three-fourths of the globe. It is a place of storms and danger, both natural and manmade. And at a time when every last patch of land is claimed by one government or another, it is a place that remains radically free.

WATER AND ICE is both an exciting, newly-discovered sea story, and a detailed reference book that belongs in the book-collection of anyone interested in maritime or immigration history. Arthur Mattson’s original research into the maritime history of Long Island and the Port of New York in the 1830s tells of: • Two dramatic shipwrecks and rescue attempts on the South Shore of Long Island. • A mass grave in the village of Lynbrook, containing 139 victims. • Merchants, sailors, passengers, and tall ships in the Age of Sail. • The brave men and women (and the cowards) involved in the ...