Consider by scholars as the single most influential book in naval strategy, Alfred Thayer Mahan's "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History: 1660-1783," is a history of naval warfare and sea power during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that would have a profound influence on the world in the early part of the twentieth century. After the publication of this work the policies outlined in it would soon be adopted by the major military powers...

The story of Titanic from the little-considered point of view of the passengers on the rescue vessel CarpathiaWhen Titanic began sending out distress calls, one of the first to reply was the Cunard liner Carpathia. As it turned out, Carpathia was the only vessel to reach the scene in time to save the lives of any of Titanic's passengers, and, after she arrived in New York, reporters crowded the pier and vied with each other to obtain interviews with...

An ebook contianing eyewitness accounts of the sinking of the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous in the first month of the war. Complete with explanatory text and background on the men and machines involved. When war broke out in September 1939, the British Royal Navy knew its deadliest enemy would be the German U-boat fleet - which was already at sea and sinking merchant ships. The British put into action a plan developed in peacetime:?Hunter-Killer...

The Admiral Graf Spee was one of three pocket battleships built by Nazi Germany in the years before the outbreak of World War II. It came into Montevideo harbor in Uruguay seeking repairs in December 1939. The ship was assaulted by a trio of British cruisers and the Nazi government opted to scuttle the ship rather than allow it to be taken by Allied forces. The Graf Spee had destroyed nine British ships in the short time between the beginning of the...

German soldiers assigned to guard the tiny Channel Island of Sark described it as a 'little Paradise' and, because it was never bombed by the RAF, the best air-raid shelter in all of Europe. But paradise for them came to a bloody end in October 1942 when a small group of British Commandos raided the island, capturing one German soldier and killing several others. Operation Basalt would have been a footnote in history but for the reaction of Hitler,...

"On July 29, 1945, four days after delivering the atomic bomb destined for Hiroshima, the U.S.S. Indianapolis was torpedoed and sunk. of the 1,199 men on board, 883 perished. Culled from previously unavailable files, this is the chilling story of how the U. S. Navy left the crew in shark-infested waters for four days, and why only a fraction of the 800 men who safely abandoned the ship survived the ordeal. This is the true story of the massive thirty-year...

In August 1942, the British launched Operation Pedestal in an attempt to deliver supplies to the stricken island of Malta, an Allied base which had been under Axis blockade for months. From August 9 to August 15, a convoy of some 50 ships ran the gauntlet of Axis bombers, submarines, E-boats, and minefields. Of the original 14 merchant vessels, only five reached Malta Grand Harbour. In 'I Wish I Had Your Wings', Angus Mansfield relates the experiences...

"Pearl Harbor tells the story of how the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii became the target of a surprise attack by the Japanese in December 1941."--

"The history of shipwrecks along the 840-mile California coast"-- "More than two thousand ships have been lost along California's 840 miles of coastline -- Spanish galleons, passenger liners, freighters, schooners. Some tragedies are marking points in U.S. maritime history. The 'City of Rio de Janeiro,' bound from Hong Kong to San Francisco in 1901, slices the fog only to strike a rock and sink in twenty minutes, sending 128 passengers to watery...

On the eve of Waterloo, a sense of finality and cautious hope pervade a nation wearied by decades of war. But peace will present its own challenge to Adam Bolitho, captain of His Majesty's Ship Unrivalled, as many of his contemporaries face the prospect of discharge.