From an author who has spent four decades in the quest for lost ships, this lavishly illustrated history of naval warfare presents the latest archaeology of sunken warships. It provides a unique perspective on the evolution of naval conflicts, strategies, and technologies, while vividly conjuring up the dangerous life of war at sea.
The Curse of the Somers retells the greatest controversy in the history of the U.S. Navy of the early American Republic, a plotted mutiny by the son of the Secretary of War. Acknowledged as the only mutiny in the Navy's history, the events on the Somers inspired countless headlines and, most famously, Hermann Melville's Billy Budd. This book vividly reconstructs the circumstances of this fascinating story, drawing from a rich historical record and from the investigation of the ship's sunken remains.