"Crichton's ultimate adventure."

—San Francisco Chronicle

"Pirates Latitudes has the loot: Gore, sex, action....A lusty, rollicking 17th century adventure."
—USA Today

"Riveting....Great entertainment....The pages and minutes fly by."
—Cleveland Plain Dealer

#1 New York Times bestselling author, the incomparable Michael Crichton ("One of the great storytellers

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Geronimo's friend Champ Strongpaws enrolls him as a contestant in "Mouse Island Idol," despite his strenuous objections, but when the CD he makes is pirated, he enlists the aid of his old friend Hercule Poirat.

Life at sea in the nineteenth century was demanding and perilous. Seamen had to be able to rely on those around them. This was easier said than done. The sea could be, and still is, a place of constant and unpredictable danger, whether by storm, shipboard disease or threat from the crew. Stories of unimaginable cruelties inflicted upon crews by savage officers and treacheries committed by mutinous crews were the soap operas of the day. People followed...

Pirates have an almost mythical status in the public imagination - we think of rogue heroes riding the high seasand 'X marks the spot'. But this image is flawed at best. Using contemporary sources, Nigel Cawthorne turns the spotlight on the reality of pirate life, revealing the truth behind the legends. It gives us an insight into infamous the men and women who plundered ship and shore, including Captain Kidd, Blackbeard and Mary Read. We learn of...

The sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage in 1912 is one of the most dramatic stories in maritime history. The largest passenger steamship in the world, fitted with more advanced safety features than any of her rivals, she was proclaimed to be virtually unsinkable. Just how and why the Titanic foundered on such a beautiful April evening is the subject of this fascinating book. Author Rupert Matthews has written a highly readable account of...

The story, covering more than a century, of three generations of the Griffiths family of Nefyn, Gwynedd, North Wales, who went to sea. The story begins with the small Llyn port of Porthdinllaen, which at one time had more master mariners per square inch than anywhere else in the United Kingdom. By the end of the 19th century the family moved to the growing major port of Liverpool, which was becoming the "capital of North Wales", before William Griffiths...

From the sinkings of the El Faro to the Andrea Doria, with dozens of similar maritime tragedies in between, the vague explanation of "human error" has been cited as the reason for the tragedies. For the first time, a 40-year safety consultant challenges much of that causation theory as too simple. The captain and crew, too often, in modern maritime history have become the scapegoats for far deeper failures of ship design, ship inspection and maintenance,...

This edition present the history of the period in which the piracy was at its pick in the Caribbean Sea. The entire regions and islands were under their control and rule, at the extent that they subsequently proclaimed Nassau as the seat of the pirate republic. Authors' goal was to show the democracy pirates established, the rules by which they lived and died, their courage and ruthlessness, their most extraordinary exploits and battles. The lives...

World-wide maritime trade has been the essential driver of wealth-creation, economic progress and global human contact. Trade and exchange of ideas have been at the heart of economic, social, political, cultural and religious life and maritime international law. These claims are borne out by the history of maritime trade beginning in the Indian Ocean and connecting to Southeast Asia, Japan, the Americas, East Africa, the Middle East especially the...

Everybody knows about the transatlantic slave trade, which saw black Africans snatched from their homes, taken across the Atlantic Ocean and then sold into slavery. However, a century before Britain became involved in this terrible business, whole villages and towns in England, Ireland, Italy, Spain and other European countries were being depopulated by slavers, who transported the men, women and children to Africa where they were sold to the highest...