On 28th January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were 30 emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's ship The Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon, The Wager was wrecked on a desolate island off the...

Drawing on decades of experience excavating shipwrecks around the world, renowned maritime archeologist David Gibbins reveals the riches beneath the waves and shows us how the treasures found there can be a porthole to the past to tell a new story about the world and its underwater secrets.

Everyone knows about pirates: or do they? The Hollywood stereotype - black flags and peg-legs, cutlasses and cannons, exotic yet sinister pets, buried treasure - is familiar and entrancing, but there is much more to be told. This book takes the reader on a voyage of discovery, investigating who these pirates were, describing their exploits and everyday lives, examining the origins of many myths about them, and explaining their incredible, often unrecognised,...

If Britain's maritime history were embodied in a single ship, she would have a prehistoric prow, a mast plucked from a Victorian steamship, the hull of a modest fishing vessel, the propeller of an ocean liner and an anchor made of stone. We might call her Asunder, and, fantastical though she is, we could in fact find her today, scattered in fragments across the country's creeks and coastlines. This extraordinary book collects those fragments for a...

September 1st, 1985. The RMS Titanic, which has been missing since April 15, 1912, is found in the North Atlantic where it lies at a depth of 3821 metres. Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a commander in the French Navy, directed underwater research of part of many expeditions to the wreck, from 1987 until his untimely death in 2023. With hundreds of hours of diving to the liner and more than 5000 objects brought to the surface, the last secrets of the liner...

A groundbreaking history of the Black Joke, the most famous member of the British Royal Navy's anti-slavery squadron, and the long fight to end the transatlantic slave trade. Initially a slaving vessel itself, the Black Joke was captured in 1827 and repurposed by the Royal Navy to catch its former compatriots. Over the next five years, the vessel liberated more enslaved people than any other in Britain's West Africa Squadron. As Britain attempted...

The remarkable 200-year history of The RNLI and their invaluable role in British Maritime history. A beautiful book of kindness, courage, and community to treasure for years to come.

This is an account in English of this war winning asset, denied to Hitler.