Kategoria BISAC: Transportation >> Ships & Shipbuilding - History

As ships left port on Friday, November 7, 1913, a deadly atmospheric disturbance was already churning Lake Superior and spreading east. By Sunday night, Lake Huron was battered by winds up to 90 miles an hour, whiteout blizzard conditions, and mountainous 35-foot waves. The White Hurricane became the worst Great Lakes storm on record: twelve ships sank, and thirty-one more were stranded on rocks and beaches. At least 248 sailors lost their lives, and the city of Cleveland faced the worst natural disaster in its...

In the midst of the Blizzard of 1978, the tanker Global Hope floundered on the shoals in Salem Sound off the Massachusetts coast. The Coast Guard heard the Mayday calls and immediately dispatched a patrol boat. Within an hour, the Coast Guard boat was in as much trouble as the tanker, having lost its radar, depth finder, and engine power in horrendous seas. Pilot boat Captain Frank Quirk was monitoring the Coast Guard's efforts by radio, and when he heard that the patrol boat was in jeopardy, he decided to act. Gathering his crew of four, he readied his forty-nine-foot steel boat,...

Of all the ships human beings have constructed to navigate the waters of the world -- from a hollowed-out log sharpened at both ends to modern ocean liners weighing thousands of tons -- those powered by the wind are among the most interesting and beautiful.
In this classic review, noted maritime artist Gordon Grant has created 80 magnificent line illustrations of some of history's most important sailing ships, beginning with a graceful Egyptian galley (c. 1600 B.C.) and ending with a splendid five-masted clipper ship of 1921. Also depicted are a Roman trireme, a Viking longship, a...

First published in 1808, The Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor became a standard guide throughout the 19th century in both England and the United States. Author Darcy Lever compiled the text for "a young gentleman whose inclinations at that time led him to the choice of a sea-faring life," and he later expanded its contents for the general use of young officers in the Royal Navy and East India Company.
Starting with a precise explanation of the principles of rigging, the text proceeds to a well-defined account of a ship's operation through the effect of the wind on its sails....

The classic minute-by-minute account of the sinking of the Titanic, in a 50th anniversary edition with a new introduction by Nathaniel Philbrick

First published in 1955, A Night to Remember remains a completely riveting account of the Titanic's fatal collision and the behavior of the passengers and crew, both noble and ignominious. Some sacrificed their lives, while others fought like animals for their own survival. Wives beseeched husbands to join them in lifeboats; gentlemen went taut-lipped to their deaths in full evening dress; and hundreds of...

In an extraordinary feat of research and intrepid historical navigation, Carl A. Brasseaux and Keith P. Fontenot serve as guides through the labyrinthian and often harrowing world of Louisiana bayou steamboat journeys of the mid to late nineteenth century. The bayou country's steamboat saga mirrors in microcosm the tale of America's most colorful -- and most highly romanticized -- transportation era. But Brasseaux and Fontenot brace readers with a boldly revisionist picture of the opulent Mississippi River floating palaces: stripped-down, utilitarian freight-haulers belching smoke from...

The fire extinguisher; the airline safety card; the lifeboat. Until September 11, 2001, most Americans paid homage to these appurtenances of disaster with a sidelong glance, if at all. But John Stilgoe has been thinking about lifeboats ever since he listened with his father as the kitchen radio announced that the liner Lakonia had caught fire and sunk in the Atlantic. It was Christmas 1963, and airline travel and Cold War paranoia had made the images of an ocean liner's distress--the air force dropping supplies in the dark, a freighter collecting survivors from lifeboats--seem like echoes...

Formed in 1901 by U.S. Steel Corporation, the Pittsburgh Steamship Company became the largest commercial fleet in the world and assumed a dominant role in Great Lakes shipping and the American steel industry. Tin Stackers tells its story: the ships, the men who sailed them, and the conditions that shaped their times. Drawing on company records and interviews with officials and sailors, Miller tells how the fleet kept organized labor off Great Lakes ships while leading the way in efficient operation, technological advancement, and employee safety. He emphasizes the human element in the...

2005 Author of the Year Award Working Harbor Committee of New York and New Jersey

2006 AAUP Book, Jacket, and Journal Show in the category of Trade Illustrated Book Design

Tugboats are the workhorses of the greatest harbor in the world, easing massive ocean liners and garbage scows alike cleanly into their berths. Tugboats of New York captures the history and lore of these iconic craft, from their precursors in the early 1800s to their heyday in the 1950s, when more than 700 small but potent boats dotted the harbor. They are the most versatile of vessels, not only guiding large...