Shipwrecked - New Zealand Maritime Disasters by Gavin McLean

$60.00 NZD

Category: Nautical - Tales

Shipwrecks litter the coasts and reefs of New Zealand. Disasters at sea are no longer the regular occurrence they were in the days when sea travel was the main means of coastal and international transport, yet recent wrecks like the Rena show that perils remain. Shipwrecked retells the voyages of ships doomed never to make their next port, in a jacketed hardback featuring plentiful photos and ephemera - including Eric Heath's superb colour illustrations of notable ships lost to the sea. ...Show more

Driven by the Wind - The Memoir of Captain Henry Rose by Karen Stade

$50.00 NZD

Category: NZ - Biography

...Christmas Day 1847 we were in a gale of a wind in the Bay of Biscay, the ship being deeply laden made rather bad weather of it. One of the boats was struck by a heavy sea and smashed and the First Mate had his leg broken. The Cook... told me that I would never see my mother again... So began the adve ntures of Captain Henry Rose, who went to sea as a 14-year-old apprentice and rose through the ranks to command some of the fastest clipper ships in the world. He sailed the trade routes between England and China, the West Indies and the American seaboard, carrying soldiers and horses to the Crimea, slavesand coolies to American plantations and convicts to Australia. He was aboard the tea clipper Collinsburgh when she raced her rival Truce around Cape Horn from China to Gravesend, and in 1870 he captained the immigrant ship Merope on her record-breaking voyage across the Southern Ocean to New Zealand. ...Show more

Sailing to the Edge of Time - The Promise, the Challenges, and the Freedom of Ocean Voyaging by John Kretschmer

$23.00 NZD

Category: Nautical - Tales

John Kretschmer is sailing's practical philosopher o as much a doer as a thinker. And that is the overarching theme of this chronicle of a sailing life. Often amusing, sometimes poignant, occasionally terrifying but always inspiring, his deeply personal account is a welcome reminder of the good life wai ting at sea. With hundreds of thousands of nautical miles under his keel, John's adventures have taken him several times around the world, with challenging crossings of the Atlantic and the Pacific, a narrow escape from a coup in Yemen, an unlikely deliverance from a coral reef off Belize as well as more serene, introspective passages where trade winds are blowing and stories are flowing. His crew has included CEOs, actors, writers, teachers, kids o in essence, everyone. John's narrative is interwoven with practical tips and advice in seamanship, but also, and just as importantly, his hard-won insights about making the most of our lives. He truly believes we find out who we really are, and what we are capable of, far from the shackles of land, when we find a place where time changes shape o days may merge into one another, but minutes are memorable. To live adventurously is to live more fully, and that is the life John Kretschmer continues to live. In this book he shares his simple profundities that will inspire those who live to sail, and those seeking something more rewarding from life. ...Show more

Erebus: The Story of a Ship (PB) by Michael Palin

$28.00 NZD

Category: Nautical - Tales

____________________________________ BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK THE SUNDAY TIMESBESTSELLER____________________________________ HMS Erebus was one of the great exploring ships, a veteran of groundbreaking expeditions to the ends of the Earth. In 1848, it disappeared in the Arctic, its fate a mystery. I n 2014, it was found. This is its story. ____________________________________ 'Beyond terrific. I didn't want it to end.' - Bill Bryson ____________________________________ Michael Palin - Monty Python star and television globetrotter - brings the remarkable Erebusback to life, following it from its launch in 1826 to the epic voyages of discovery that led to glory in the Antarctic and to ultimate catastrophe in the Arctic. The ship was filled with fascinating people- the dashing and popular James Clark Ross, who charted much of the 'Great Southern Barrier'; the troubled John Franklin, whose chequered career culminated in the Erebus's final, disastrous expedition; and the eager Joseph Dalton Hooker, a brilliant naturalist - when he wasn't shooting the local wildlife dead. Vividly recounting the experiences of the men who first set foot on Antarctica's Victoria Land, and those who, just a few years later, froze to death one by one in the Arctic ice, beyond the reach of desperate rescue missions, Erebusis a wonderfully evocative account of a truly extraordinary adventure, brought to life by a master explorer and storyteller. ____________________________________ 'Thoroughly absorbs the reader. . . Carefully researched and well-crafted, it brings the story of a ship vividly to life.' - Sunday Times 'This is an incredible book. I couldn't put it down. The Erebusstory is the Arctic epic we've all been waiting for.' - Nicholas Crane 'Palin is a superb stylist, low-key and conversational, who skillfully incorporates personal experience. He turns up obscure facts, reanimates essential moments, and never shies away from taking controversial positions. This beautifully produced volume - colour plates, outstanding maps - is a landmark achievement.' - Ken McGoogan, author of Fatal Passage 'I absolutely loved it- I had to read it at one sitting . . . Fascinating.' - Lorraine Kelly, ITV Lorraine 'Magisterial . . . Brings energy, wit and humanity to a story that has never ceased to tantalise people since the 1840s.' - The Times ...Show more

The Outlaw Ocean: Crime and Survival in the Last Untamed Frontier by Ian Urbina

$40.00 NZD

Category: Nautical - Tales

The Outlaw Ocean is a riveting, adrenaline-fuelled tour of a vast, lawless and rampantly criminal world that few have ever seen- the high seas. There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world's oceans- too big to police, and under no clear i nternational authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to the unbridled extremes of human behaviour and activity. Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortionists, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways- drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world and their risk-fraught lives. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil and shipping industries, and on which the world's economies rely. Both a gripping adventure story and a stunning expose, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching. ...Show more

Peter Montgomery: The Voice of Yachting by Bill Francis

$39.99 NZD

Category: Nautical - Tales

The Time of Terror by Seth Hunter

$28.00 NZD

Category: Nautical - Tales

1793: The French have killed their king and are about to embark on the violent period of bloodletting known as the Terror. Brig-sloop Commander Nathan Peake is on smuggler patrol off the Sussex coast and desperate for some real action. As revolutionary France declares war on England, he seizes his chanc e. Peake is given a vital mission; to destroy the French economy by smuggling millions of French banknotes across the Channel and into the heart of Paris. His operation leads him from perilous seas to the Empire of the Dead - a labyrinth of catacombs under the French capital where bodies are buried, secrets hidden and plots hatched. But as opposition to the Terror mounts, Peake is forced to leave Paris and join the storm-tossed British squadrons in the Atlantic in the first thunderous battle between the rival navies. ...Show more

The Totorore Voyage by Gerry Clark

$49.99 NZD

Category: Nautical - Tales

The adventure of a lifetime for the 56-year-old author, sailing in the Pacific, around the bottom of South America, and completing the circumnavigation of the sub-Antarctic waters, tragically lost in June 1999 on the Antipodes Islands. First published 1988; this edition 2000.

A Time to Die by Robert Moore

$26.95 NZD

Category: Nautical - Tales

At 10.30 am on Saturday August 12, 2000, two massive explosions in rapid succession shook the icy Arctic waters of the Barents Sea. The Kursk, one of the largest and most technologically advanced nuclear subs in the world, carrying a crew of 118 Russian sailors, had suffered a major, unexplained acciden t, and rapidly crashed to the ocean floor. Most of us still remember how the news of this terrible accident was reported around the world, and the agonising tension of the days when the doomed crew waited for rescue, while the Russians seemed to be turning away all international offers of help, until it was too late. Robert Moore, the former Moscow Correspondent of ITN, and now their Foreign Affairs editor, has written a thrilling and authoritative investigative book on this tragedy. He talked to everyone from the families of the crew, the Russian officials, the international rescue teams, and the US submarine crews who were monitoring the Kursk's movements, to produce a book which will not only recreate the tragic and terrifying final moments of the doomed submarine and its crew, but which will also explore the events leading up to it, and the political, social and environmental issues raised by the catastrophe. For example, what will come out is how (and why) the Cold War is still being waged beneath the world's oceans, while at the same time the Americans and Russians are collaborating on building an International Space Station; what is the truth behind the Russian claims of a collision with an American sub; how Russia's ailing under-resourced and maintained nuclear fleet is an ecological disaster waiting to happen, etc. But above all, this is a human story, how the Kursk's crew was doomed, how their surviving families fought to learn the truth about their fate, about the British civilian North Sea divers who tried to assist in the rescue mission; told in a narrative with all the excitement, immediacy and emotional intensity, of bestsellers such as A PERFECT STORM and BLACK HAWK DOWN ROBERT MOORE is an award-winning TV journalist, 38 years old. He was ITN's Moscow's Correspondent at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of Mikhael Gorbachev, and their Middle East Correspondent during the Palestinian uprising, the peace process and the assassination of Rabin. Since 1997, he has been their Foreign Affairs Editor, covering a wide range of international stories, including wars in Chechnya, Kosovo and Sierra Leone. ...Show more

The Rattlesnake by Jordan Goodman

$35.00 NZD

Category: Nautical - Tales

The epic, beautifully-told story of a great voyage of exploration. HMS Rattlesnake, an ageing British warship, was commissioned in 1846 to survey Australia

To the Baltic with Bob: An Epic Misadventure by Griff Rhys Jones

$32.95 NZD

Category: Nautical - Tales | Reading Level: very good

In the summer of 2002, two profoundly amateur sailors, Griff and Bob, set off in an elderly yacht for Russia, because, on the map, it looked easier than sailing to Cornwall. They took Baines with them, as he knew how to mend the engine. And this is their story.Over four long months of applied bickering in a vessel no bigger than a London taxi, they visited most of the geographically interesting restaurants on the Baltic seaboard. They sailed, over, and, even at one point, onto the mysterious heart of the Nordic world. They pushed themselves to the very limits of human endurance, before finally agreeing to wash their sleeping bags on a cool cycle at number six. To the Baltic with Bob is the full account of their stirring journey through the longest heat wave the frozen north has ever suffered; of three men in search of the answer to a troubling question: can you really outmanoeuvre a mid-life crisis by running away to sea? ...Show more

Treasure Islands: Sailing the South Seas in the Wake of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson by Pamela Stephenson

$60.00 NZD

Category: Nautical - Tales

Internationally renowned psychoanalyst, ex comedienne, mother of four, three teenage girls and Billy Connolly, the extraordinary Pamela Stephenson now adopts a new guise, historian, sailor, and circumnavigator of the globe.