'For most men, as Epicurus has remarked, rest is stagnation and activity madness. Mad or not, the activity that I have been pursuing for the last twenty years takes the form of voyages to remote, mountainous regions.'H.W. 'Bill' Tilman's fourteenth book describes three more of those voyages, 'the first comparatively humdrum, the second totally disastrous, and the third exceedingly troublesome'.The first voyage describes Ti...

In "South! - The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917," Ernest Henry Shackleton recounts the harrowing journey of his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which sought to make the first land crossing of Antarctica. Written in a compelling narrative style, the book blends vivid imagery with meticulous detail, capturing not only the physical perils of the expedition but also the psychological strains faced by the crew. Shackleton's eloquence and attention to emotion immerse the r...

I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion. His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal. One is so near to another, that no air can come between them. They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered. Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron. His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth. The flakes of h...

How the mighty clipper ships transformed Australia from convict outpost to a nation.More than one million Australians can trace their heritage to the migrant ships of the mid-to-late 19th century...The story of the Clipper ships, and the tens of thousands of migrants they bought to the Australian colony of the nineteenth century, is one of the world's great migration stories. For anyone who travelled to Australia before 1850, it was a long and arduous journey that could tak...

In 1996, at 100 years of age, Edith Haisman, (nee Brown) became the world's oldest living survivor of the Titanic disaster. She was almost sixteen years of age at the time and could well remember those screams and cries for help as the ship sank in those icy waters of the North Atlantic. Those sounds were to haunt her for the rest of her life.

It seemed like a good idea. Tired of everyday life ashore, Farley Mowat would find a sturdy boat in Newfoundland and roam the salt sea over, free as a bird. What he found was the worst boat in the world, and she nearly drove him mad. The Happy Adventure, despite all that Farley and his Newfoundland helpers could do, leaked like a sieve. Her engine only worked when she felt like it. Typically, on her maiden voyage, with the engine stuck in reverse, she backed out of the harbour under full s...

In 1957, Farley Mowat shipped out aboard one of Newfoundland’s famous coastal steamers, tramping from outport to outport along the southwest coast. The indomitable spirit of the people and the bleak beauty of the landscape would lure him back again and again over the years. In the process of falling in love with a people and a place, Mowat also met the woman who would be the great love of his life.A stunningly beautiful and talented young artist, Claire Wheeler insouciantly climbed...

"The Worst Journey in the World" by Apsley Cherry-Garrard is the epic tale of the disastrous "Winter expedition" of the Author and his two companions- Henry Bowers and Dr Edward Wilson - all members of Scott's ill-fated Antarctic expedition to the South Pole, who attempted a scientific expedition in the midst of the Antarctic Winter - in the coldest temperatures found on Planet Earth.At the behest of the scientific establishment they went in search of some samples of fertilised but...

A biography that puts you on the quarterdeck with history's greatest sailorCaptain James Cook is one of the greatest maritime explorers in world history. Over three remarkable voyages of discovery into the Pacific in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Cook unravelled the oldest mystery surrounding the existence of Terra Australis Incognita - the Great South Land. He became the first explorer to circumnavigate New Zealand and establish that it was two main islands; discover ...

By the same author as the bestselling Total Loss this is a new collection of terrifying and compelling accounts of yachts lost at sea. The seven deadly causes of loss continue to take their toll and Paul Gelder has compiled first-hand accounts of shipwreck and sinking caused by Collision Gear Failure Stress of Weather Faulty Navigation Fire Crew Failure and Exhaustion. The moving emotionally charged descriptions of shipwrecked sailors abandoning their yachts at sea will have you on the edg...

The frozen continent of Antarctica has always captured the imagination of explorers and adventurers from around the World, most especially in the first few decades of the 20th Century, when the race was on to be the very first person to reach the South Pole.In this carefully selected Anthology we present the personal accounts of the greatest early explorers of Antarctica: Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen, Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Sir Douglas Mawson...