Exploring the Titanic
Books
Shipwrecks
Batavia's Graveyard
919.413 D22b
The Dutch East India Company loaded the Batavia with gold, silver, and gems for her maiden voyage to Java; the ship itself was a symbol of Earth's most powerful monopoly. The mutiny might have succeeded, but, in the dark morning hours of June 3, 1629, the Batavia crashed on a small chain of islands near Australia.
search Novelist® PlusA Brave Vessel: the True Story of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest
910.9163 W89b
In 1609, aspiring writer William Strachey set sail for the New World aboard the Sea Venture, only to wreck on the shores of Bermuda. Strachey's account of the tragedy and the castaways' arrival in a devastated Jamestown remains among the most vivid writings of the early colonial period.
search Novelist® PlusThe Finest Hours: the True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard's Most Daring Sea Rescue
910.9163 T72fi
In the winter of 1952, New England was battered by the most brutal nor'easter in years. On Monday, February 18, while the storm raged, two oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, found themselves in the same horrifying predicament. Built with "dirty steel" and not prepared to withstand such ferocious seas, both tankers split in two, leaving the dozens of men on board utterly at the Atlantic's mercy.
search Novelist® PlusIn Harm's Way: the Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
940.545973 S79i
The story might be familiar from the movie Jaws: on July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed in the South Pacific by a Japanese submarine. An estimated 300 men were killed upon impact; close to 900 sailors were cast into the Pacific Ocean, where they struggled to stay alive, battered by a savage sea and fighting off sharks, hypothermia, and dementia. By the time help arrived, all but 317 men had died.
search Novelist® PlusIn the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
910.91 P54i
The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific, the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, and disease.
search Novelist® PlusIn Search of Robinson Crusoe
919.618 S49i
This story seeks out, and discovers, the flesh-and-blood prototypes for Daniel Defoe's famous castaway and his island home. Severin makes a convincing case that Alexander Selkirk, long assumed to be the model for Crusoe, was little more than Defoe's immediate inspiration.
search Novelist® PlusNot without Hope
796.332 S39n
On Saturday, February 28, 2009, 24-year-old Nick Schuyler and three football friends sailed away from Tampa Bay for a day of fun in the Gulf of Mexico. But 35 miles off the coast of Florida, their boat flipped. As they gripped the boat, the temperature dropped to 60 degrees and the waves climbed to more than 10 feet.
search Novelist® PlusOn the Edge of Survival: a Shipwreck, a Raging Storm, and the Harrowing Alaskan Rescue That Became a Legend
910.9164 W18o
In 2004, during a brutal storm, a Malaysian cargo ship runs aground off the coast of Alaska. One of the most incredible Coast Guard rescue missions of all time is set in motion. Through gale-force winds, all but nine are hoisted by rescue basket to safety. But during attempts to save the last crewmembers, one of the Jayhawks is engulfed by a rogue wave and crashes into the sea.
search Novelist® PlusThe Sea Hunters: True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks
910.45 C98s
Clive Cussler and his crack team of NUMA (National Underwater Marine Agency) volunteers have found the remains of numerous tragic wrecks. Here are the dramatic, true accounts of twelve of the most remarkable underwater discoveries made by Cussler and his team.
search Novelist® PlusWreck of the Carl D.: a True Story of Loss, Survival, and Rescue at Sea
917.74 S39w
At approximately 5:30 P.M. on November 18, 1958, the Carl D. Bradley, a 623-foot limestone carrier caught in one of the most violent storms in Lake Michigan history, snapped in two and sank within minutes. Four of the thirty-five man crew escaped to a small raft and a search-and-rescue mission hunted for survivors, while the frantic citizens of nearby Rogers City anxiously awaited word of their loved ones' fates.
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