Naval Ships

In his new audiobook Ships of Oak and Guns of Iron: The War of 1812 and the Birth of the American Navy, author Dr. Ronald Utt not only sheds new light on the naval battles of the War of 1812 and how they gave birth to our nation's great navy, but tells the story of the War of 1812 through the portraits of famous American war heroes.

America’s most decorated warship of World War II, Enterprise was constantly engaged against the Japanese Empire, earning the title “the fightingest ship” in the navy. Her career was eventful, vital, and short. Commissioned in 1938, her bombers sank a submarine just ten days after the Pearl Harbor attack, claiming the first Japanese vessel lost in the war.

There’s a super storm brewing out in the Pacific… one that will change the course of history forever… After three successful raids on Japanese outposts, the men and pilots of USS Enterprise are ready to get out there and hit Tojo once more. However, something dark and dangerous lies on the horizon… but before they face that storm, the U.S. Navy and Army has a delivery to make… right to Hirohito’s front porch!

Reeling from her last knock-down, drag-out with Japan’s mighty combined fleet – the Kido Butai – USS Enterprise limps back to Pearl Harbor for repairs and refitting. And like the battle-hardened warriors who live and work inside her, this gallant lady will return to the fight even stronger… but it can’t happen too soon.

Out of nothing but the government’s behest, a few bold men conjured a giant ship-building industry in 1940 and launched the ships that took America to war and to victory. In 1940, the shadow of war loomed large over American life. President Roosevelt understood that it wasn’t a matter of if...

IN HARM’S WAY The year is 1802. The peace is a rumor. The sea is a killing ground. Captain Robert Harrison sails from Portsmouth in the thirty-two gun frigate H.M.S. Falcon with orders that are simple and merciless. Report to the Leeward Islands Station. Patrol from Cayenne to Trinidad. Destroy all enemy shipping bearing French or Spanish colors, naval vessels and merchantmen alike. What follows is sixty days on the most dangerous coast in the Atlantic world. The coast of the Spanish Main offers no mercy and asks for none. Fever takes men without warning and without remedy. The rivers are...

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.

ASH AND ARROW In a Portsmouth graveyard on a wet and moonless night, Asher Blake stumbles over a man in the dark. He might have robbed him. Instead, he helped him to his ship. That man was Captain Goodwin, and the decision would change everything. From sleeping on a tavern porch to serving as midshipman, Ash learns the sea under two of the navy's most principled officers. When their ship is lost to a corsair and he and Lieutenant Collins spend three days clinging to wreckage in the open Atlantic, it is Collins' ordered discipline and a direct order to survive that brings them home. Assigned...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The shocking true story of the USS Houston, FDR’s legendary lost cruiser, and the epic saga of the survivors who faced one of World War II’s most brutal ordeals—from the acclaimed author of The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors “Captivating [and]...

The South found itself in an uneven struggle against the industrial might of the North. The odds were stacked against the southern agrarian states. And with only half the population of the North, southerners were at a disadvantage, having only a fraction of the manpower of the federal Army. As the conflict erupted, the North boasted a fleet of warships. The South was severely lacking. It was the age of ironclad vessels, but there was a scarcity of iron ore in the south. The odds seemed insurmountable. "The Confederate Navy" thrusts you headlong into the war's naval confrontations. It's a ...

Michael Palin brings the fascinating story of the Erebus and its occupants to life, from its construction as a bomb vessel in 1826 through the flagship years of James Clark Ross’s Antarctic expedition and finally to Sir John Franklin’s quest for the holy grail of navigation - a route through the Northwest Passage, where the ship disappeared into the depths of the sea for more than 150 years. It was rediscovered under the arctic waters in 2014.

In July 1545, Henry VIII watched as one of the proudest warships of his reign sank in the Solent. The Mary Rose was not an ordinary vessel. Built during Henry’s naval revolution, she represented England’s move from temporary sea power to a permanent royal fleet. She carried guns, soldiers, sailors, craftsmen, and the political ambition of a king who wanted the sea itself to become an instrument of Tudor power. Then, during the Battle of the Solent, she heeled, took water, and sank with terrifying speed. Hundreds of men were trapped and drowned within sight of the English coast. Mary ...

Before The Wind August, 1792. England has declared war on the French Republic, and Captain James Pike has at last been given the ship he has waited half his career to command — Valiant, a twenty-eight gun frigate fresh from Plymouth yard. Off the coast of Spain, with orders to scout for Commodore Whitcombe's squadron, Pike sights three sail running south under no colours. Two French frigates and a brig — and the brig, when at last she is taken, will prove to be carrying half a million gold louis bound for Toulon to buy the silence of half the Mediterranean. But the gold is only the ...

They survived capture—only to be imprisoned aboard ships designed for death. During the Second World War, tens of thousands of Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees were transported across the Japanese Empire aboard vessels that became known as hell ships. Packed into dark, airless cargo holds, the prisoners endured suffocating heat, starvation, disease, dehydration, beatings, and conditions so overcrowded that men could barely sit or breathe. There were few toilets, almost no medical supplies, and little hope of escape. Yet the greatest danger often came from above. Because many...

Using just a few of the chapters of The Evolution of Naval Gunnery and the Evolution of the Ironclad Battleship of The British Navy Book, by Cyril Field in 1915, and combined with additional material from The Evolution of Naval Armament by Frederick Leslie Robertson from 1921, which were published without illustrations, Captain Mark Parsons and illustrator Thaddeus Black have updated these classic ironclad chapters into modern print, formatting, and color for the digital age. Also included is additional information about America’s Ironclad ship era. These additions make those old Public ...

In this seminal story of naval life during the Napoleonic wars, Frederick Marryat's young hero embarks upon a life at sea and finds it to be a rough school indeed. Simple's trials and triumphs, with his faithful mentor, Terence O'Brien, at his side, mirror Marryat's personal experiences. Among the exciting events depicted are the hand-to-hand combat of "cutting-out" missions, the devastating hurricane off St. Pierre, and a mutiny aboard the Rattlesnake.

Orphaned at five, nothing held Whidden back from embarking on sea life seven years later. Serving as an apprentice, he quickly proved his worth and earned himself a mate's position by his early 20s. Graduating to third, second, and first office, he ended his career in command of, and having part-ownership of, his own vessel. Ocean Life in the Old Sailing Ship Days records a series of real events from his childhood impressions of rough and ready seamen to his thrilling and brutal experiences of war. 

When Admiral William Halsey selected Destroyer Squadron 21 to lead his victorious ships into Tokyo Bay to accept the Japanese surrender, it was the most battle-hardened US naval squadron of the war. But it was not the squadron of ships that had accumulated such an inspiring résumé; it was the people serving aboard them. Through diaries, personal interviews with survivors, and letters written to and by the crews during the war, preeminent historian of the Pacific theater John Wukovits brings to life the human story of the squadron and its men.

At the peak of his power, in the 1940s and 1950s, William Francis Gibbs was considered America's best naval architect. His quest to build the finest, fastest, most beautiful ocean liner of his time, the S.S. United States, was a topic of national fascination. When completed in 1952, the ship was hailed as a technological masterpiece at a time when "made in America" meant the best.

The Imposter Lieutenant Brent: The Assassin Lieutenant Brent has a secret that could see him hanged—he's not who he claims to be. After assuming the identity of a dying naval officer in a Moorish prison, he's spent three years carefully building a life in His Majesty's Navy, dreaming of the day he can return to England and marry Emily, the woman he loves. But when Captain Timmons summons him with chilling words—"I want you to kill a man"—Brent's carefully constructed world threatens to collapse. Timmons knows the truth about his identity, and he's willing to keep it secret... for a ...