When, as a young man in the 1880s, Benjamin Lundy signed up for duty aboard a square-rigged commercial sailing vessel, he began a journey more exciting, and more terrifying, than he could have ever imagined: a treacherous, white-knuckle passage around that notorious "graveyard of ships," Cape Horn.A century later, Derek Lundy, author of the bestselling Godforsaken Sea and an accomplished amateur seaman himself, set out to recount his forebear's journey. The Way of a Ship is a mesme...

An electrifying account of human courage and endurance, this is the story of the 1996 Vendée Globe, the most dangerous of all sailing races, as experienced by the fourteen men and two women competitors.

In early May 2005, Captain Tom Tighe and first mate, Loch Reidy, of the sailboat Almeisan welcomed three new crew members, two men and a woman, for a five-day voyage from Connecticut to Bermuda. While Tighe and Reidy had made the journey countless times, the rest of the crew were paying-passengers learning about offshore sailing and looking for adventure. Four days into their voyage, they got adventure—but not the kind they had expected or had any training to handle. A massive sto...

A heart-stopping true-life tale of maritime disaster, survival, and daring rescue from a master storytellerSeventy-foot waves batter a torn life raft 250 miles out to sea in one of the world's most dangerous places, the Gulf Stream. Hanging on to the raft are three men, a Canadian, a Brit, and their captain, Jean Pierre de Lutz, a dual citizen of America and France. Their capsized forty-seven-foot sailboat has filled with water and disappeared below the tempestuous sea. The giant w...

A Malaysian cargo ship on its way from Seattle, Washington, to China ran aground off the coast of western Alaska's Aleutian Islands on December 8, 2004, during a brutal storm, leading to one of the most incredible Coast Guard rescue missions of all time.Two Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopters lifted off immediately from Air Station Kodiak during the driving storm in an effort to rescue the ship's eighteen crew members before it broke apart and sank in the freezing waters. Nine of the c...

In 1968, nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. It was a feat that had never been accomplished and one that would forever change the face of sailing. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death.In this extraordinary book, Peter Nichols chronicles a contest of the individual against the sea, wage...

Richard Henry Dana referred to this book as "a voice from the sea." Influencing such authors as Conrad and Melville, it has become a maritime classic that has inflicted legions of men with a passion for the sea.Dana, a law student turned sailor for health reasons, sailed in 1834 on the brigPilgrimfor a voyage from Boston around Cape Horn to California. Dana Point was named as a result of this journey. Drawing from his journals,Two Years before the Mastgives a vivi...

Challenged by an expert who said it couldn’t be done, Joshua Slocum, a fearless New England sea captain, set out in April 1895 to prove that a man could sail alone around the world. A little over three years and forty-six thousand miles later, the proof was complete. This is Slocum’s own account of his remarkable adventures during the historic voyage of the Spray.Whether Slocum was more accomplished as a writer or sailor is hard to say. His writing style is fast paced, wit...

“There’s no margin for mistakes in submarines. You’re either alive or dead.”–Richard O’KaneHailed as the ace of aces, captain Richard O’Kane, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor for his consummate skill and heroism as a submarine skipper, sank more enemy ships and saved more downed fliers than anyone else.Now Pulitzer Prize—winning author William Tuohy captures all the danger, the terror, and the pulse-pounding action of undersea combat as he chronicles O’Kane...

This gripping story of courage and achievement is an account of Robert Falcon Scott's last fateful expedition to the Antarctic, as told by surviving expedition member Apsley Cherry-Garrard. Cherry-Garrard tells of the journey from England to South Africa and southward to the ice floes, where began the unforgettable polar journey across a forbidding and inhospitable region. On November 12, 1912, in arctic temperatures, Cherry-Garrard, in a search party, found the bodies of Scott and his com...

In 1973, Norma Cobb, her husband Lester, and their five children pulled up stakes in the Lower Forty-Eight and headed north to Alaska to follow a pioneer dream of claiming land under the Homestead Act. The only land available lay north of Fairbanks near the Arctic Circle where grizzlies outnumbered humans twenty to one. In addition to fierce winters and predatory animals, the Alaskan frontier drew the more unsavory elements of society's fringes. From the beginning, the Cobbs found themselv...

"I began to daydream about the jungle...."On April 6, 1940, explorer and future World War II spy Theodore Morde (who would one day attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler), anxious about the perilous journey that lay ahead of him, struggled to fall asleep at the Paris Hotel in La Ceiba, Honduras.Nearly seventy years later, in the same hotel, acclaimed journalist Christopher S. Stewart wonders what he's gotten himself into. Stewart and Morde seek the same answer on their quests:...