"The best-selling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters reclaims the daring freelance sailors who proved essential to the winning of the Revolutionary War. The heroic story of the founding of the U.S. Navy during the Revolution has been told before, yet missing from most maritime histories of America's first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels, from 20-foot whaleboats to 40-cannon men-of-war, that truly revealed the new nation's character-above...

On June 4, 1944, the course of World War II was forever changed. That day, a US Navy task force achieved the impossible--capturing German U-boat U-505. Called Operation Nemo, it was the first seizure of an enemy ship in battle since the War of 1812, one of the greatest achievements of the US Navy and a victory that shortened the duration of the war.

Seth Ledyard Phelps was of the Old Navy and the New. As a midshipman and junior officer he served under sail off West Africa, in the War with Mexico, and in the Mediterranean and Caribbean. As a senior office in the river squadrons of the Civil War he saw combat at its closest. Phelps, a native of Chardon, Ohio, was a prolific and observant correspondent. His private letters, to his wife, his father, and to political patrons and other naval officers,

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An American frigate and her supporting schooner enter a shoal-filled bay off Northumberland (northeastern England) on a bleak day in December during the American Revolution. Their immediate purpose is to pick up from the rocky cliffs someone referred to at first simply as a pilot. There is a suggestion that he may be a very special pilot when Captain Munson, commander of the frigate, orders his first officer, Lieutenant Edward Griffith, to stand offshore...

In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mystery–and make history themselves.
For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced hallucinatory...

Hitler's U-Boats-German submarine aces tell their own stories of war and death under the sea. THEY LIVE WITH DEATH The silent death they deal to the ships above them...and the dark death that waits for them in the depths of the sea. These authentic reports by the top U-Boat commanders of World War II tell the vivid story of the terrors and triumphs of the war under the waves-its heroics and horrors, and the final defeat of Germany's most effective...

It is 1942 and the German submarine fleet is heavily engaged in the so-called 'Battle of the Atlantic' to harass and destroy English shipping. With better escorts of the destroyer class, however, German U-Boats have begun to take heavy losses. This story of one U-Boat crew details how these submariners maintained their professionalism as soldiers and attempted to accomplish impossible missions, while trying to understand and obey the ideology of the...

The thunderous roar of exploding depth charges was a familiar and comforting sound to the crew members of the USS Barb, who frequently found themselves somewhere between enemy fire and Davy Jones's locker.

Under the leadership of her fearless skipper, Captain Gene Fluckey, the Barb sank the greatest tonnage of any American sub in World War II. At the same time, the Barb did far more than merely sink ships-she changed forever the way submarines...

No other publication on this subject comes even close to including the amount of detail provided in this book. An introduction both summarizes previous works on the subject and describes the difficulties of obtaining and verifying information from either the Germans or the Allies on U-boat losses. The main part of the book lists by hull number each U-boat's date of commissioning, its commanding officer, and the date and port of departure for its...

"On June 19, 1864, just off the coast of France, one of the most dramatic naval battles in history took place. On a clear day with windswept skies, the dreaded Confederate raider Alabama faced the Union warship Kearsarge in an all-or-nothing fight to the finish, the outcome of which would effectively end the threat of the Confederacy on the high seas. Award-winning and bestselling historians Phil Keith and Tom Clavin introduce some of the crucial...