Naval Exploration

A gripping biography of one of the seventeenth century’s greatest sea captains. Courage, ambition and treachery on the high seas… Perfect for fans of Andrew Lambert, Kevin Jackson, N. A. M. Rodger, and Eric Jay Dolin. In June 1611, Henry Hudson, captain of the Discovery, his young son, and seven other crew members were forced into a small gig and set adrift amongst the ice floes of Hudson Bay. They were never seen again. Shy and aloof, yet courageous and sometimes recklessly daring, English explorer and navigator Hudson made four momentous voyages in 1607, 1608, 1609, and 1610, journeys...

"Listen to this if you want to hear a narrator at the top of his game recount a fascinating--and at times disturbing--true story of adventure, disaster, discovery, cannibalism, and more. Will Damron makes Levy's fascinating account of the Greely (Polar) Expedition come to life...This is a...

She charts the truth. He commands the lie. And the ice does not care whose authority is at stake. Freya Lindqvist has checked her readings three times, and the pressure ridge ahead of HMS Meridian is two miles closer than the Admiralty survey claims. At the speed the ship is making through the pack, that discrepancy will matter inside fourteen hours. Commander Ashworth hears her out with the pleasant, unhurried courtesy of a man whose decision was made before she finished speaking, because the survey she is correcting belongs to a serving officer of the Crown, and she is a contracted ...

In this masterful account in the spirit of Bill Bryson and Ian Frazier, a longtime deep-sea diver masterfully weaves together the science and history of Earth's last remaining frontier: the sea.In an age of unprecedented exploration and innovation, our oceans remain largely unknown, and...

In an era when a single ocean voyage could alter the geopolitical balance of the globe, one English mariner embarked on an expedition that would challenge the mightiest empire of the sixteenth century. The Queen's Pirate: Francis Drake and the Voyage that Shook an Empire offers a long, detailed, and politically neutral account of the legendary circumnavigation of 1577–1580. This work of maritime history moves beyond romanticized mythology to deliver a grounded, balanced exploration of a journey defined equally by audacity, extreme survival, and high-stakes diplomacy. The narrative ...

It is two years since Thomas Kydd was spirited away in the night aboard the old ship Duke William. Now, he and the other members of the ill-fated Artemis are shipwrecked sailors, back in London to be summoned as court martial witnesses. Then, in a political act to shield an officer's reputation...

It's the great age of fighting sail, when the seven seas are stalking grounds for prey and prize money… Aboard the crack frigate HMS Artemis, life can be invigorating-and short. Now a fully-fledged Jack Tar, Kydd sails into Portsmouth Harbour and a hero's welcome after a ferocious battle...

Zheng He's Treasure Fleets: The Voyages That Could Have Changed the World In 1405, sixty years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic in a 60-foot ship with 90 men, China launched an armada of over 300 vessels and 27,000 crew into the Indian Ocean. The flagship was 400 feet long. The commander was a castrated slave who had risen to become the most powerful admiral in the world. His name was Zheng He. And the story of what he accomplished — and why China chose to stop — is one of the great untold dramas in world history. In this book, you'll discover: The extraordinary personal journey of ...

Napoleon's forces are poised to invade Britain, and Commander Thomas Kydd's ship is at the forefront of the fleet. Then Kydd is abruptly withdrawn from the fleet and sent back to Dover on a secret mission to guard a mysterious American inventor. He is furious to find he will miss his opportunity...

Thrilled at his first command, a little brig sloop called Teazer; Thomas Kydd must race to bring his ship to battle readiness in order to defend Malta against Barbary corsairs. But his jubilation does not last long - peace is suddenly declared. Instead he sets sail as captain of a convict...

Captain James Cook was one of the most skilled navigators of the eighteenth century, a man whose charts reshaped the world and whose voyages transformed the Pacific into a space legible to European power. Rising from modest beginnings in Yorkshire, Cook mastered the arts of navigation, surveying, and command with a discipline that set him apart from his contemporaries. His voyages mapped New Zealand and Australia’s eastern coastline with unprecedented precision, proved that scurvy could be controlled on long sea journeys, and established professional standards that influenced maritime ...

In April 1789, a small British transport ship erupted into one of the most famous mutinies in naval history. Within a year she would lie burned off a rock no chart recognised, her crew scattered across oceans, and her captain fighting for his life in an open boat. Mutiny on the Bounty: Rebellion, Survival, and the Lost Colony of Pitcairn Island tells the full arc of this story – from the cramped decks of His Majesty’s ship Bounty to the hidden gardens of a misplotted Pacific island, and finally to the courtrooms and gallows of London. Gordon J. MacKenzie follows Lieutenant William Bligh...

In the age when the world was being measured by the length of a sail and the courage of those who dared to follow it, Portugal stood at the edge of history and looked outward. Its ships cut paths into seas no European fleet had mastered before. Its kings dreamed of spices, gold, souls, and glory. Its sailors carried iron and faith into waters where neither had yet ruled. This is often told as a story of empire. It is also a story of hunger. The Age of Discoveries did not begin on the deck of a caravel, nor in the halls of kings, but in fields where grain failed, in villages where children ...

Shadows Under the Waves A powerful journey through the history, evolution, and legacy of submarine warfare. Dive beneath the surface in this visually compelling and thought-provoking exploration of submarine warfare—where silence, strategy, and steel have shaped the course of history. From ancient underwater concepts to cutting-edge nuclear submarines, this book uncovers the hidden world beneath the waves. What’s inside: A sweeping historical narrative Discover the evolution of submarines from early Renaissance sketches to Cold War-era nuclear leviathans and today’s stealth machines. ...

Resurrection World, The Eden Project is a pre-Apocalypse science fiction novel about groups of humans who are resurrected on a terraformed world. The Eden Project is an effort by the Federation of Space-Faring Sentient Races to avoid an approaching extinction event to the Earth. The first, and largest group of humans died in London during the Black Plague, and the second group died in the Battle of Gettysburg and on a convict ship that sunk off Australia in the same year. The third group died in London and Pearl Harbor in December 1941. After the Royal Navy's Fleet's secret weapon has ...

Intrepid voyager, writer and comedian Michael Palin follows the trail of two expeditions made by the Royal Navy's HMS Erebus to opposite ends of the globe, reliving the voyages and investigating the ship itself, lost on the final Franklin expedition and discovered with the help of Inuit...

What Modern Warfare Myths Get Wrong About The Vikings The shield wall was not broken by courage. It was broken by exhaustion, bleeding, and the brutal reality of human limits. Most modern portrayals of Viking warfare are built on a false premise: that violence in the Dark Ages was driven primarily by berserker rage, strength, and fearlessness. But open the archaeological record, and a very different reality emerges. Viking warfare was not an expression of rage—it was a highly engineered system constrained by logistics. Viking Warfare and Engineering presents the gritty, operational ...

Dive into an immersive maritime history exploring how humble wooden fleets conquered the oceans and forged global trade. Perfect for your daily commute or armchair traveling, this epic journey reveals how simple timber watercraft transformed from basic survival tools into sprawling modern...

The ocean shapes our history. From the birth of humanity, oceans have separated and connected cultures. They have entranced and terrified generations. And they have shaped history in critical ways. Maritime trade. Naval warfare. Ocean exploration. Across the centuries, the ocean became a site for scientific advances and a highway for globalization. The Ocean Blue explores the way seas influence human history, from the ancient world to today.

Wally Schirra was the only one of the original seven NASA astronauts to command a spacecraft in all three pioneering space programs - Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. This chronicle of his experiences takes us into space on Schirra's 1962 Mercury flight that orbited Earth six times and aboard Gemini for the first rendezvous of two manned craft in space.