Shipwrecks

"...a completely riveting account of the Titanic 's fatal collision and the behavior of the passengers and crew, both noble and ignominious. Some sacrificed their lives, while others fought like animals for their own survival. Wives beseeched husbands to join them in lifeboats; gentlemen went taut-lipped to their deaths in full evening dress; and hundreds of steerage passengers, trapped below decks, sought help in vain.

"...Walter Lord's classic minute-by-minute re-creation is as vivid now as it was upon first publication fifty years ago. From the initial distress flares to the struggles of those left adrift for hours in freezing waters, this semicentennial edition brings that moonlit night in 1912 to life for a new generation of readers."

Also available on audio, and it was transformed into a 1958 film featuring Honor Blackman and David McCallum.

It was the storm of the century, boasting waves over one hundred feet high--a tempest created by so rare a combination of factors that meteorologists deemed it "the perfect storm."  When it struck in October 1991, there was virtually no warning. "She's comin' on, boys, and she's comin' on strong", radioed Captain Billy Tyne of the Andrea Gail off the coast of Nova Scotia, and soon afterward the boat and its crew of six disappeared without a trace. In a narrative taut with the fury of the elements, Sebastian Junger takes us deep into the heart of the storm, depicting with vivid detail the courage, terror, and awe that surface in such a gale. Also available on audio.

On Film:
The Andrea Gail's struggle with a ferocious Northeastern storm is brought to life in the 2000 movie adaptation of Junger's book, starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Diane Lane.

The subtitle tells it all: the life and strange surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, mariner: who lived eight and twenty years all alone in an uninhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the great river of Orinoco; having been cast on shore by shipwreck, wherein all the men perished but himself. With an account how he was at last strangely delivered by pirates.  Based on a true story.

In the late nineteenth century, Rhoda investigates a wrecker that may be luring ships to destruction on the Virginia barrier island where her father is Keeper of a U.S. Lifesaving Station. Includes historical notes on the United States Life-Saving Service.

Anyone interested in Virginia's earliest colonial history ought to get to know the passengers and crew of the Sea Venture. This ship was sent to relieve Jamestown's starving colonists but never made it. The survivors landed on Bermuda, known as the Devil's Isle, where their saga continued. Their story was the inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest.

In the summer of 1609 a fleet of nine ships left England bound for the Jamestown Colony. Days before landfall, the fleet was hit by a hurricane. Four nights later, the flagship, Sea Venture, ran aground on the reefs on Bermuda's northern coast. Miraculously everyone survived. This is their story.

At the edge of a cliff lies the wreck of a small sailboat. How did it get there? "Waves carried it up in a storm," says an old sailor. But is it possible that waves could ever get that high? There is another story -- the story of a boy and his obsessive desire to be the greatest sailor, the story of a storm that carried the boy and his boat to a place where boats glide like gulls high above the water and not upon it. Chris Van Allsburg tells that story of the boy and his boat, the Zephyr, in words and haunting, full-color pastel paintings. His sailboats sail the night sky with the stars in pictures so vivid that the reader can almost hear the wind in the sails. Here is a work of unusual artistry that will enchant readers of all ages for many years to come.
(From the publisher's description)