Author: Eric Jay Dolin
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1324093099
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
The true story of five castaways abandoned on the Falkland Islands during the War of 1812—a tale of treachery, shipwreck, isolation, and the desperate struggle for survival. In Left for Dead, Eric Jay Dolin—“one of today’s finest writers about ships and the sea” (American Heritage)—tells the true story of a wild and fateful encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig, and a British warship in the Falkland archipelago during the War of 1812. Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailors and two Americans, including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard, abandoned in the barren, windswept, and inhospitable Falklands for a year and a half. With deft narrative skill and unequaled knowledge of the very pith of the seafaring life, Dolin describes in vivid and harrowing detail the increasingly desperate existence of the castaways during their eighteen-month ordeal—an all-too-common fate in the Great Age of Sail. A tale of intriguing complexity, with surprising twists and turns throughout—involving greed, lying, bullying, a hostile takeover, stellar leadership, ingenuity, severe privation, endurance, banishment, the great value of a dog, the birth of a baby, a perilous thousand-mile open-ocean journey in a seventeen-foot boat, an improbable rescue mission, and legal battles over a dubious and disgraceful wartime prize—Left for Dead shows individuals in wartime under great duress acting both nobly and atrociously, and offers a unique perspective on a pivotal era in American maritime history.
Author: Howard Jencks
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1469190958
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
While investigating the murder of a suspected serial killer in the Lake Tahoe basin, Detective Michael Garrett is lead back to the small desert border town he once called home, where he uncovers a violent drug cartel that has begun expansion into the United States, and discovers the frightening reality that he has now placed not only himself, but his family and others in harms way. Driven by tourism, the last thing the city of Stateline, Nevada wanted to do was announce the presence of a serial killer. Driven by the laws of nature, the last thing Rosa Jimenez wanted was to become his next victim. Called to assist with a gruesome fi nding, Detective Garrett fi nds himself entrenched in an investigation he cant walk away from. Recognizing Rosa from his past, he was resolute that justice be served. As the investigation leads Garrett south, he seeks the assistance of an old friend and current Vice-Detective with the LAPD, David Ross. When Ross is unable to open doors in the Los Angeles area, Garrett realizes his next stop is his hometown on the Mexican border where he stumbles on a link to Los Zetas, a Drug Cartel that has formed an alliance with the Mexican Mafi a. Used to operating with impunity in Mexico, the cartel targets Garrett and his family as his investigation begins to threaten their business. In a daring attempt to make things right, the detectives cross the border to confront the man directing the cartel henchmen.
Author: Pete Nelson
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 0375890181
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
For fans of sea battles, adventures, and war stories like Unbroken, this is the incredible true story of a boy who helps to bring closure to the survivors of the tragic sinking of the USS Indianapolis, and helps exonerate the ship’s captain fifty years later. Hunter Scott first learned about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis by watching the movie Jaws when he was just eleven-years-old. This was fifty years after the ship had sunk, throwing more than 1,000 men into shark-infested waters—a long fifty years in which justice still had not been served. It was just after midnight on July 30, 1945 when the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Those who survived the fiery sinking—some injured, many without life jackets—struggled to stay afloat as they waited for rescue. But the United States Navy did not even know they were missing. As time went on, the Navy needed a scapegoat for this disaster. So it court-martialed the captain for “hazarding” his ship. The survivors of the Indianapolis knew that their captain was not to blame. For fifty years they worked to clear his name, even after his untimely death. But the navy would not budge—not until Hunter entered the picture. His history fair project on the Indianapolis soon became a crusade to restore the captain’s good name and the honor of the men who served under him.
Author: David Roberts
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743272315
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
In 1743, four stranded Russian sailors survived the next six years in the Arctic with no provisions. Making a bow and arrows from driftwood--since there are no trees there--they survived on reindeer meat until another ship blown off course rescued them.
Author: Eric Jay Dolin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404338
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
Traces the history of the relationship between America and China back to its earliest days, when the United States traded with China for furs, opium, and rare sea cucumbers, but left an ecological and human rights disaster that still reverberates today.
Author: David L. Mearns
Publisher: Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1925575284
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 544
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Book Description
Winner of the Mountbatten Award for Best Book, 2018 David Mearns has discovered some of the world's most fascinating and elusive shipwrecks. From the mighty battlecruiser HMS Hood to the crumbling wooden skeletons of Vasco da Gama's 16th century fleet, David has searched for and found dozens of sunken vessels in every ocean of the world. The Shipwreck Hunter is an account of David's most intriguing and fascinating finds. It details both the meticulous research and the mid-ocean stamina and courage required to find a wreck miles beneath the sea, as well as the moving human stories that lie behind each of these oceanic tragedies. Combining the derring-do of Indiana Jones with the precision of a surgeon, in The Shipwreck Hunter David Mearns opens a porthole into the shadowy depths of the ocean.
Author: Andrea Pitzer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982113359
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Originally published in hardcover in 2021 by Scribner.
Author: Dean King
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0759509697
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 351
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Book Description
b.A masterpiece of historical adventure, ISkeletons on the Zahara The western Sahara is a baking hot and desolate place, home only to nomads and their camels, and to locusts, snails and thorny scrub -- and its barren and ever-changing coastline has baffled sailors for centuries. In August 1815, the US brig Commerce was dashed against Cape Bojador and lost, although through bravery and quick thinking the ship's captain, James Riley, managed to lead all of his crew to safety. What followed was an extraordinary and desperate battle for survival in the face of human hostility, starvation, dehydration, death and despair. Captured, robbed and enslaved, the sailors were dragged and driven through the desert by their new owners, who neither spoke their language nor cared for their plight. Reduced to drinking urine, flayed by the sun, crippled by walking miles across burning stones and sand and losing over half of their body weights, the sailors struggled to hold onto both their humanity and their sanity. To reach safety, they would have to overcome not only the desert but also the greed and anger of those who would keep them in captivity. From the cold waters of the Atlantic to the searing Saharan sands, from the heart of the desert to the heart of man, Skeletons on the Zahara is a spectacular odyssey through the extremes and a gripping account of courage, brotherhood, and survival.
Author: Ronald Utt
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1621570088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 699
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Book Description
The War of 1812 is typically noted for a handful of events: the burning of the White House, the rise of the Star Spangled Banner, and the battle of New Orleans. But in fact the greatest consequence of that distant conflict was the birth of the U.S. Navy. During the War of 1812, America’s tiny fleet took on the mightiest naval power on earth, besting the British in a string of victories that stunned both nations. In his new book, Ships of Oak and Guns of Iron: The War of 1812 and the Birth of the American Navy, author Dr. Ronald Utt not only sheds new light on the naval battles of the War of 1812 and how they gave birth to our nation’s great navy, but tells the story of the War of 1812 through the portraits of famous American war heroes. From the cunning Stephen Decatur to the fierce David Porter, Ships of Oak and Guns of Iron relates how thousands of American men and boys gave better than they got against the British Navy. The great age of fighting sail is as rich in heroic drama as any epoch. Dr. Utt’s Ships of Oak and Guns of Iron retrieves the American chapter of that epoch from unjustified obscurity, and offers readers an intriguing chronicle of the War of 1812 as well as a unique perspective on the birth of the U.S. Navy.
Author: Eric Jay Dolin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393079244
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 494
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Book Description
A Seattle Times selection for one of Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010 Winner of the New England Historial Association's 2010 James P. Hanlan Award Winner of the Outdoor Writers Association of America 2011 Excellence in Craft Award, Book Division, First Place "A compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics." —Los Angeles Times As Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name, he grew concerned that his Dutch patrons would be disappointed in his failure to find the fabled route to the Orient. What became immediately apparent, however, from the Indians clad in deer skins and "good furs" was that Hudson had discovered something just as tantalizing. The news of Hudson's 1609 voyage to America ignited a fierce competition to lay claim to this uncharted continent, teeming with untapped natural resources. The result was the creation of an American fur trade, which fostered economic rivalries and fueled wars among the European powers, and later between the United States and Great Britain, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. In Fur, Fortune, and Empire, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the rise and fall of the fur trade of old, when the rallying cry was "get the furs while they last." Beavers, sea otters, and buffalos were slaughtered, used for their precious pelts that were tailored into extravagant hats, coats, and sleigh blankets. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire then is to understand how North America was explored, exploited, and settled, while its native Indians were alternately enriched and exploited by the trade. As Dolin demonstrates, fur, both an economic elixir and an agent of destruction, became inextricably linked to many key events in American history, including the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812, as well as to the relentless pull of Manifest Destiny and the opening of the West. This work provides an international cast beyond the scope of any Hollywood epic, including Thomas Morton, the rabble-rouser who infuriated the Pilgrims by trading guns with the Indians; British explorer Captain James Cook, whose discovery in the Pacific Northwest helped launch America's China trade; Thomas Jefferson who dreamed of expanding the fur trade beyond the Mississippi; America's first multimillionaire John Jacob Astor, who built a fortune on a foundation of fur; and intrepid mountain men such as Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith, who sliced their way through an awe inspiring and unforgiving landscape, leaving behind a mythic legacy still resonates today. Concluding with the virtual extinction of the buffalo in the late 1800s, Fur, Fortune, and Empire is an epic history that brings to vivid life three hundred years of the American experience, conclusively demonstrating that the fur trade played a seminal role in creating the nation we are today.
