"This new edition of C. R. Boxer's translations of famous Portuguese shipwreck stories also includes a new translation of the tragic tale of Captain Manuel de Sousa Sepulveda, who was shipwrecked with his family and crew near the Cape of Good Hope in 1552. After enduring treacherous storms that completely destroyed their ship and its cargo, a few hundred passengers and slaves were forced to go ashore, where they struggled for several weeks with starvation and thirst, treks through rugged terrain, attacks and manipulation by African tribes, and conflicts within their own group. Only a handful of survivors reached Mozambique in 1553 after their dreadful and extreme ordeal."--BOOK JACKET.
Disaster at sea is an ever-present peril, inspiring ancient legends, great works of fiction, and countless yarns of deadly typhoons, vessels consumed by fire, and desperate castaways alone on an empty ocean.
"Factual stories of scandal, disaster, and endurance, launching us on storm-tossed voyages through history's most fearsome gales and unforgiving seas" BOOK JACKET.
At 8:43 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, October 6, 1918, HMS Kashmir rammed HMS Otranto off Islay, Scotland. Both ships were former British passenger liners from the P&O Steamship Company that had been pulled into the war to ferry American soldiers between New York and various British ports. On this stormy morning, however, they were part of Convoy HX-50 carrying troops to Liverpool. On board were 372 British officers and sailors and 701 American soldiers. The Americans were mostly Southern farm boys from Fort Screven in Savannah under the command of Lt. Sam Levy, a Georgia Tech graduate from Atlanta. The Kashmir managed to back away and follow the harsh wartime order that required her to ignore any maritime disasters that might befall her sister ships and to continue on her prescribed course rather than stop and take on survivors. Thus it was that—with winds blowing at 70 to 75 mph and waves at more than 60 feet—the severely damaged Otranto was left dead in the water with more than a thousand souls aboard. Many Were Held by the Sea: The Tragic Sinking of HMS Otranto, tells the story of what happened during that voyage—mostly from the perspective of the American soldiers—and builds to the disastrous conclusion. The narrative details the courage of the young men on board, men who, for the most part, had never seen the ocean or learned to swim. It tells of the anguish from the home front, as family members had to wait weeks to learn the fate of their relatives. In addition, Scott’s narrative tells the personal story of Lieutenant Craven of the Royal Navy, serving as Commander of the rescue ship, who was forced to gamble with the lives of those on both ships in order to save the maximum number of passengers.
Soon after 2:00 a.m. on Easter morning 2008, the fishing trawler Alaska Ranger began taking on water in the middle of the frigid Bering Sea. While the first mate broadcast Mayday calls to a remote Coast Guard station more than eight hundred miles away, the men on the ship’s icy deck scrambled to inflate life rafts and activate beacon lights. By 4:30 a.m., most of the forty-seven crew members were in the water. Many knew that if they weren’t rescued soon, they would drown or freeze to death. Two Coast Guard helicopter rescue teams were woken up in the middle of the night to save the crew of the Alaska Ranger. Many of the men thought the mission would be routine. They were wrong. The helicopter teams battled snow squalls, enormous swells, and gale-force winds as they tried to fulfill one guiding principle: save as many as possible. Deadliest Sea is a daring and mesmerizing adventure tale that chronicles the power of nature against man. Veteran journalist Kalee Thompson recounts the harrowing stories of both the rescuers and the rescued while paying tribute to the courage, tenacity, and skill of the dedicated people who risk their lives for the lives of others.
'Being about to write down the disastrous voyage of this great ship, it occurred to me how rash men are in their undertakings, chief among which, or one of the greatest is confiding their lives to four planks lashed together, and to the discretion of the furious winds.' So wrote Henrique Dias, an eye-witness of the wreck of the Sao Paulo off Sumatra and the subsequent fate of the survivors. His account is one of three narratives, here translated into English for the first time, of certain shipwrecks which befell the Portuguese in the mid-16th century. The other two describe the wrecking of two East Indiamen off the East African coast, and the misadventures of a voyage from Brazil to Lisbon. In his introduction, Professor Boxer describes the lives of the three chroniclers, and gives bibliographical details of their works. The narratives are translated from the original accounts which Bernardo Gomes de Brito included in his História Trágico-Marítima (Lisbon, 1735-36). The present volume forms a companion to Professor Boxer's earlier work The Tragic History of the Sea, 1589-1622 (Hakluyt Society, 1959). This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1968.
This stirring narrative is the riveting tale of the sinking of the steamship "Arctic"--a story of extraordinary bravery and appalling cowardice that took nearly 400 lives and the American merchant marine business down with it. of illustrations.
From the author of Mayflower, Valiant Ambition, and In the Hurricane's Eye--the riveting bestseller tells the story of the true events that inspired Melville's Moby-Dick. Winner of the National Book Award, Nathaniel Philbrick's book is a fantastic saga of survival and adventure, steeped in the lore of whaling, with deep resonance in American literature and history. In 1820, the whaleship Essex was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale, leaving the desperate crew to drift for more than ninety days in three tiny boats. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents and vivid details about the Nantucket whaling tradition to reveal the chilling facts of this infamous maritime disaster. In the Heart of the Sea, recently adapted into a major feature film starring Chris Hemsworth, is a book for the ages.
