Manteo embraces the northern part of Roanoke Island, the historic island inset from North Carolina's Outer Banks. It is best known as the site of Sir Walter Raleigh's first settlement in the New World. In the early 1800s, the town was a small, unnamed fishing village on Shallowbag Bay. Roughly 300 years after the colonists mysteriously disappeared, the town was named Manteo after the Native American who befriended the settlers and was baptized by them. The peaceful life enjoyed by islander...

Fishing on the Outer Banks for subsistence began over 1,000 years ago with the Algonquin Indians, who made their summer camps on the islands. They came for the seafood and learned how to fish for various species during each season. Some of their fishing methods are still used by local watermen. The early settlers to the area were also fishers for sustenance. It was not until the Civil War, however, when they became commercial fishermen. Historic shad runs combined with the building of infr...

Those fortunate enough to live on Roanoke Island have always depended on boats. In exploration-era sketches, Native American Algonquins were depicted in their dugout canoes. English settlers took the native concept a step further, developing kunners and, later, periaugers. Sloops and schooners made it possible to trade with far-off lands. Shad boats allowed fishermen to catch enough fresh product to ship to northern markets. Shrimp boats, crab boats, and trawlers brought about a new level ...

The remoteness and isolation of North Carolina's northern Outer Banks has shaped both early settlers and relative newcomers into tough and independent souls. Sir Walter Raleigh's colonists may have mysteriously disappeared from Roanoke Island, but the enterprising homesteaders who followed managed to eke out a living on the windswept and battered banks. Entrepreneur E.R. Daniels ran a line of mail and freight boats that helped connect the Outer Banks to the outside world. Former slave and ...

The story behind the major motion picture from Disney—starring Chris Pine, Eric Bana, and Casey Affleck—written by a recognized master of the genre—“a blockbuster account of tragedy at sea” (The Providence Journal).It’s the winter of 1952 and a ferocious Nor’easter is pounding New England with howling winds and seventy-foot seas. Two oil tankers get caught in the violent storm off Cape Cod, its fury splitting the massive ships in two. Back on shore are fou...

"Gripping. . . . An intrinsically thrilling tale." — New York Times Book ReviewIt was the Perfect Storm, but instead of raging far out in the Atlantic, the Great Hurricane of 1938 left a wake of death and destruction across seven states. Sudden Sea re-creates that terrifying September day in gripping detail, focusing on the intense human drama that unfolded as an unlikely alignment of meteorological conditions conspired to bring t...

This adaptation for young readers of The Finest Hours: The True Story of the US Coast Guard's Most Daring Sea Rescue by Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman tells the story of the shipwreck of two oil tankers and the harrowing Coast Guard rescue when four men in a tiny lifeboat overcame insurmountable odds and saved more than 30 stranded sailors. Now a major motion picture from Disney, starring Chris Pine and Casey Affleck.On the night of February 18, 1952...

The complete and definitive New York Times –bestselling chronicle of the Titanic, including survivors' stories and extensive research separating fact from myth.In just two hours and forty minutes, 1,500 souls were lost at sea when the RMS Titanic succumbed to the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Based on interviews with sixty-three survivors, A Night to Remember tells the story of that fateful night, o...

"Before there was the Perfect Storm, there was the Great Hurricane of 1938. A riveting and wonderfully written account." —Nathaniel PhilbrickOn the night of September 21, 1938, news on the radio was full of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. There was no mention of any severe weather. By the time oceanfront residents noticed an ominous color in the sky, it was too late to escape. In an age before warning systems and the ubiquity of television, this unprecedented storm...

New York is a city of few boundaries, a city of well-known streets and blocks that ramble on and on, into our literature, dreams, and nightmares. We know the city by the byways that split it, streets like Broadway and Madison and Flatbush and Delancey. From those streets, peering down the blocks and up at the top floors, the city seems immense and endless.And though the land itself may end at the water, the city does not. Long before Broadway was a muddy cart track, the water was th...

The spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New York’s Lower East Side who stowed away on the most remarkable feat of science and daring of the Jazz Age, The Stowaway is “a thrilling adventure that captures not only the making of a man but of a nation” (David Grann, bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon).It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American opt...

Adventure is not just for the young! Although "I own a boat!" was the opening phrase in their courtship and eventual married life, little did Baby Boomer couple George and Pat Hospodar know that those words would lead to their making a year-long boat trip. Read all about it in their memoir Reflection on America's Great Loop: A Baby Boomer Couple's Year-Long Boating Odyssey.