The Grey Wolves of Eriboll by David Hird – The Secret Mass Surrender of Nazi U-boats
March 21, 2010
Mass surrender of Nazi U-boats documented in new book
For 65 years residents of a remote Scottish village have paid heed to the wartime warning that “loose lips sink ships”.
The surrender of German submarines in Loch Eriboll in Sutherland was one of the strangest episodes at the end of World War II. Locals were sworn to [...]
Skipjack: The Story of America’s Last Sailing Oystermen by Christopher White – A Review
February 1, 2010
A review by Steven Toby, written for the Maritime History Listserv, included here with his kind permission. Sounds like a fascinating book.
Skipjack: The Story of America’s Last Sailing Oystermen by Christopher White is an excellent book on the last commercial fishing craft operating under sail in the US. The author has a journalistic rather than a scholarly [...]
Unlocking the bloody history of the ship made famous by Turner, the Fighting Temeraire
January 23, 2010
Sam Willis has written what appears to be a fascinating book – Fighting Temeraire.
J.M.W. Turner’s painting, The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up, hangs in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square and was recently voted to be Britain’s favorite painting, by a landslide, in a BBC4 poll. Sam Willis, a naval historian [...]
Galveston’s the Elissa: The Tall Ship of Texas by Kurt Voss
November 13, 2009
Most of the over 4,000 books in Arcadia Publishing’s “Images of America” series focus on local histories with extensive photographs of what a town, city or region looked like way back when. (Not long after my family moved into our 1880s brownstone, Arcadia came out with a book titled “Jersey City”, and I probably spent [...]
Read MoreMy River Chronicles – Rediscovering the America on the Hudson by Jessica DuLong : A Review
November 3, 2009
My River Chronicles – Rediscovering the America on the Hudson, is a fascinating voyage in the life of a young woman, who finds herself oddly quite at home in a most unlikely new job. It is also a journey through the history of America itself as it moves from an industrial past into an uncertain future.
While [...]
J D Davies wins 2009 Samuel Pepys Award
October 23, 2009
This year’s Samuel Pepys Award has been awarded to novelist and historian J D Davies for his book, Pepys’s Navy:Ships, Men and Warfare 1649-89, which examines the English navy in the second half of the 17th century. Chair of the judges Ann Sweeney said she expected the book to become “an enduring work of reference. [...]
Read MoreLive Yankees, the Sewalls and their Ships, by W.H. Bunting – A Review
October 18, 2009
Live Yankees, the Sewalls and their Ships is a fascinating and sweeping history of one family from Bath, Maine, which built and operated over one hundred merchant ships, mostly square riggers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It offers a complex and intriguing portrait of the shipbuilders, ship owners, captains and crews who helped [...]
Read MoreThe Temple, a new Sir Sidney Smith novel by Tom Grundner – A Review
October 12, 2009
There have been hundreds of novels written about dashing Royal Navy ships’ captains who bear a striking resemblance to Lord Cochrane. The resemblance and family history are most obvious in Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower, but a dozen or so other worthy fictional officers share the same heritage. It is therefore pleasing to see that [...]
Read More“Lords of the Sea”, a new Book by John R. Hale – the Birth of “Trireme Democracy”
August 9, 2009
The New York Times has a review by Dwight Garner this week of what sounds like a fascinating book – LORDS OF THE SEA – The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy by John R. Hale.
Rowing to Democracy
Mr. Hale’s thesis in “Lords of the Sea” is that the construction [...]
Captains Contentious – The Dysfunctional Sons of the Brine by Louis Arthur Norton – A Review
June 23, 2009
Louis Arthur Norton’s book Captains Contentious – The Dysfunctional Sons of the Brine is an entertaining reminder that history is finally about individuals, dedicated to the causes in which they believe, as well as serving their own needs and obsessions.
Norton looks at five ship’s captains who fought for the infant American Navy in the Revolutionary [...]
Congratulations to James Nelson, author of
George Washington’s Navy
June 11, 2009
Congratulations to James Nelson, author of George Washington’s Navy: How the American Revolution Went to Sea, which has been selected as the 2009 recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for excellence in naval literature.
Read more in Maritime Today
We had previously posted about the book on its release - George Washington’s Secret Navy – a [...]
Alaric Bond’s “His Majesty’s Ship” – A Review
June 9, 2009
Whereas most nautical adventure fiction follows the same general format – tracking the exploits of a young ship’s officer, Alaric Bond takes a refreshingly different tack. His latest novel, His Majesty’s Ship does not focus on a single hero but follows multiple officers and crew of the 64 gun HMS Vigilant. His range of characters and his use of [...]
Read MoreNaval Academy Graphic Novel to Aid Recruiting
May 10, 2009
Not too long ago my teenaged son asked me to read the graphic novel Watchmen. I enjoyed it far more than I expected to. (The movie wasn’t bad either.) I was intrigued then when Alaric Bond passed this article along to me. It seems the US Naval Academy is using a graphic novel to recruit [...]
Read MoreThe Frigate Surprise: The Complete Story of the Ship Made Famous in the Novels of Patrick O’Brian – A Review
May 8, 2009
In his Aubrey/Maturin series, Patrick O’Brian wrote of HMS Surprise, a small British frigate, originally captured from the French. Over several books, the Surprise became almost as beloved a character, in her own way, as Jack Aubrey and Doctor Maturin themselves.
Independent of her qualities in fiction, HMS Surprise was indeed a real ship upon which [...]
Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History by Alan Huffman – a Review
May 4, 2009
In his book, Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History, Alan Huffman follows a handful of Union soldiers from their enlistment in the Army during the American Civil War, through the confusion and terror of battle, and then on to the often far greater horror of Confederate prison [...]
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