This, the fifth and final volume of life at sea and on shore takes the story to the noughties. Earlier volumes roughly followed the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.Sadly, the Yorkshire trawling industry is now in terminal decline following the heady days of earlier decades. There is still humour, mischief, characters, sinking’s and near misses to recall. The latter part of the book relates to a whole new life at sea, sailing on tall ships, meeting more characters, making many new friends and...

Fred Normandale remembers when his home town of Scarborough was one of the great centres for the fishing industry and had the characters to match. He has turned his memories into a nostalgic book full of tales of his life and adventures at sea. "I grew up in the 'bottom end' of Scarborough among some wonderful characters big men with big hearts. The fishermen were extremely hard working and when ashore mostly hard drinking though never mixing the two pursuits. I thought this was a normal b...

This second book from this writer relates to some of the North Sea fishermen in the early 1970s through the author's eyes. "Fishing is an extreme occupation and adversity breeds characters. These hard working hard drinking men were wonderful characters living life to the full. Their way of life has almost gone and their like will never be seen again." Fred Normandale

Ebbing Tide the fourth and final volume in the Tide series has been difficult to complete. The earlier books were a pleasure to write as I related some extremely funny and zany moments while growing up and making my career in the North Sea fishing industry. In this volume Ive continued with the humour but have also narrated the long slow death of the way of life I was born to. In 1971 the UK joined the Common Market and control of our national waters and fish stocks (but not oil) was surre...

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...

Sailing, Yachts and Yarns is a selection of British sailing legend Tom Cunliffe's most entertaining, outspoken and instructive writing from the pages of Yachting Monthly magazine. Tom's regular column for this leading sailing magazine gives him free reign to explore a wide range of topics. He has a gift for capturing the magic of sail and finding pearls of practical wisdom in the most unlikely nautical adventures. Sailing, Yachts and Yarns is a wonderful miscellany of wit, wisdom and wonde...

Lee Shore Blues is not your average nautical book. Peter Heiberg takes us on an irreverent charge through the highlights of his life at sea, from evading the homosexual advances of a 300-pound steward in the mid-Pacific at 19 years of age, to rebuilding and sailing a thirty-ton engineless Bristol Channel pilot cutter from the UK to Canada’s west coast. After commercial fishing in the Queen Charlotte Islands, skippering a tug boat on the Inside Passage, and captaining a cruise ship...

From the acclaimed master of action and suspense. The all time classicMillions of pounds in gold bullion are being pirated in the Irish Sea. Investigations by the British Secret Service, and a sixth sense, have bought Philip Calvert to a bleak, lonely bay in the Western Highlands. But the sleepy atmosphere of Torbay is deceptive. The place is the focal point of many mysterious disappearances. Even the unimaginative Highland Police Sergeant seems to be acting a part. But why?

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.

In the summer of 1988, Libby Purves set sail with her family on a voyage round the entire coastline of Britain, from the soft, sandy South-East, to the wilder shores of Orkney. They travelled in the wake of their literary-nautical forebears aboard their m

What is life like without arms?Rod Haines was born in 1942, at a time when doctors freely gave advice on options of what to do with this armless baby, and whom they thought would also have limited brain function.Rod was the middle child of five children and his childhood was full of love, support and encouragement from family and friends. He was mainstreamed at school and went on to university to become a lawyer, and later diverting into other academic areas, especially in ...

Les Powles only had 8 hours of sailing experience when he decided to sail solo around the world. Many novices would be content to just dream of such an adventure, and maybe get as far as a solo Channel crossing a couple of years down the line. Not so Les Powles, one of the twentieth century's most extraordinary and eccentric sailors.Les was in his 50s when he built himself a yacht with little prior knowledge of boatbuilding. Remarkably he made it across the Atlantic, though his nav...