Shipwrecks have captured our imagination for centuries. Here acclaimed historian Sam Willis traces the astonishing tales of ships that have met with disastrous ends, along with the ensuing acts of courage, moments of sacrifice and episodes of villainy that inevitably occurred in the extreme conditions. Many were freak accidents, and their circumstances so extraordinary that they inspired literature: the ramming of the Essex by a sperm whale was immortalized in Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Some symbolize colossal human tragedy: including the legendary Titanic whose maiden voyage famously went...

Our understanding of warfare at sea in the eighteenth century has always been divorced from the practical realities of fighting at sea under sail; our knowledge of tactics is largely based upon the ideas of contemporary theorists (rather than practitioners) who knew little of the realities of sailing warfare, and our knowledge of command is similarly flawed. In this book the author presents new evidence from contemporary sources that overturns many old assumptions and introduces a host of new ideas. In a series of thematic chapters, following the rough chronology of a sea fight from initial...

J.M.W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up (1838) was his masterpiece. Sam Willis tells the real-life story behind this remarkable painting. The 98-gun Temeraire warship broke through the French and Spanish line directly astern of Nelson's flagship Victory during the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), saving Nelson at a crucial moment in the battle, and, in the words of John Ruskin, fought until her sides ran 'wet with the long runlets of English blood...those pale masts that stayed themselves up against the war-ruin, shaking out their ensigns through the...