But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world's oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation.Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways -- drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. 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 expos�, 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.

    This book traces the history of human movement and interaction around and across the world's greatest bodies of water, charting our relationship with the oceans from the time of the first voyagers. David Abulafia begins with the earliest of seafaring societies - the Polynesians of the Pacific, the possessors of intuitive navigational skills long before the invention of the compass, who by the first century were trading between their far-flung islands. By the seventh century, trading routes stretched from the coasts of Arabia and Africa to southern China and Japan, bringing together the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific and linking half the world through the international spice trade. In the Atlantic, centuries before the little kingdom of Portugal carved out its powerful, seaborne empire, many peoples sought new lands across the sea - the Bretons, the Frisians and, most notably, the Vikings, now known to be the first Europeans to reach North America. As Portuguese supremacy dwindled in the late sixteenth century, the Spanish, the Dutch and then the British each successively ruled the waves.Following merchants, explorers, pirates, cartographers and travellers in their quests for spices, gold, ivory, slaves, lands for settlement and knowledge of what lay beyond, Abulafia has created an extraordinary narrative of humanity and the oceans. From the earliest forays of peoples in hand-hewn canoes through uncharted waters to the routes now taken daily by supertankers in their thousands, The Boundless Sea shows how maritime networks came to form a continuum of interaction and interconnection across the globe: 90 per cent of global trade is still conducted by sea. This is history of the grandest scale and scope, and from a bracingly different perspective - not, as in most global histories, from the land, but from the boundless seas.

     Xianggu is sold into slavery to work on a floating brothel, her virginity bought by the highest bidder. Determined to rise above her poverty and lowly status, she learns the business from the madam. But a violent midnight pirate raid destroys her ambitions. Kidnapped by the powerful pirate boss, Xianggu embarks on a journey that demands beauty, brains, and brawn. Yet she must do more than learn to wield a sword, sail a ship, and swim across the bay if she hopes to survive. She must prove her worth to the Red Flag fleet. The winds never blow in the same direction and tragedy forces Xianggu to make a risky decision that changes not only her life but the lives of thousands of pirates. Surrounded by jealous men, devious women, ancient prejudices, and the Qing navy, Xianggu battles to save her empire, her family, and her own heart. In 18th century China, when men made and enforced the rules, the Dragon Lady lived by her own.

    If you don't have one, 'tis a sad and grievous thing. El Diablo Caesar: the "Scourge of the Florida Straits." It was said he was evil incarnate, devoid of conscience and mercy, a cutthroat, a man without a heart. He was not one to be trifled with, for he had reportedly killed many a man in his day, and sometimes for the slightest infraction. Intrepid and stalwart ship captains folded under his guns without a fight. Fair and lovely maidens swooned in his presence. His own crew trembled under his horrible gaze. Governments bent to his will for fear of retribution. As long as his name persisted upon the seas, El Diablo remained a terror in the hearts of all who might cross his loathsome and unrepentant path. He was a sight to see, though few, reportedly, had escaped his invidious grasp to tell the tale. He had been described by one fortunate soul as “A huge man! As big as a mountain! His skin is black as his heart, pitch and inky! His arms are like ship’s masts. His hands like anvils! To hold his gaze is nothing less than blood chilling!” Strangely, there was some dispute as to whether El Diablo was actually a white man or a black man, for differing accounts had described him as both one and the other. ...

    We hear the songs of seahorses and scallops, eavesdrop on the conversations of lobsters, and swim in the glow of the fluorescent jellyfish.A poetic blend of ancient myths, modern science, and storytelling through the ages, Eloquence of the Sardine is an invitation and guide to a dreamlike underwater world where the legends are often more believable than the incredible reality.This is nature writing at its best —informative, captivating, and accessible, with a personal angle, about an endlessly fascinating and still mysterious subject.A seafood platter or a day at the beach will never be the same.

    Despite treacherous weather, the captain ordered the ship to set sail for Durban. And so began the ill-fated voyage.Hurricane force winds and giant rogue waves aggravated the hostile storm. Soon the ship started taking water. Panicked senior crew members scrambled into lifeboats leaving the ship’s evacuation to the on-board entertainers. At one point, a musician manned the bridge, at another, a magician.Women and children clambered aboard lifeboats which were launched into terrifying seas, leaving their husbands behind, unsure if they would see each other again. After all the operational lifeboats had been utilised, 221 passengers and junior crew were left stranded on the rapidly sinking ship.During this catastrophe the South African Air Force embarked on their biggest air rescue ever, with helicopter crews and Navy divers risking everything to evacuate the remaining passengers.In Against All Odds, maritime lawyer Andrew Pike, who was part of the legal investigation into the Oceanos’ sinking, recreates the compelling drama and extraordinary heroism of the greatest maritime rescue in South African history.

    Some were still-born on the drawing board or in the model shop, some met with disaster after they had been launched but were still incomplete, others were diverted to wartime service which they never survived. Potentially, some were the greatest liners ever conceived and would have surpassed the most famous, not only in speed and splendour, but in size and appearance. They were all the victims of circumstance – a fate narrowly missed by a few of the most celebrated passenger ships which did make it into commercial service.

    Yet Pulitzer Prize–winning author Annie Dillard avers Moby-Dick is the “best book ever written about nature,” and nearly the entirety of the story is set on the waves, with scarcely a whiff of land. In fact, Ishmael’s sea yarn is in conversation with the nature writing of Emerson and Thoreau, and Melville himself did much more than live for a year in a cabin beside a pond. He set sail: to the far remote Pacific Ocean, spending more than three years at sea before writing his masterpiece in 1851. A revelation for Moby-Dick devotees and neophytes alike, Ahab’s Rolling Sea is a chronological journey through the natural history of Melville’s novel. From white whales to whale intelligence, giant squids, barnacles, albatross, and sharks, Richard J. King examines what Melville knew from his own experiences and the sources available to a reader in the mid-1800s, exploring how and why Melville might have twisted what was known to serve his fiction. King then climbs to the crow’s nest, setting Melville in the context of the American perception of the ocean in 1851—at the very start of the Industrial Revolution and just before the publication of On the Origin of Species. King compares Ahab’s and Ishmael’s worldviews to how we see the ocean today: an expanse still immortal and sublime, but also in crisis. And although the concept of stewardship of the sea would have been entirely foreign, if not absurd, to Melville, King argues that Melville’s narrator Ishmael reveals his own tendencies toward what we would now call environmentalism. Featuring a coffer of illustrations and an array of interviews with contemporary scientists, fishers, and whale watch operators, Ahab’s Rolling Sea offers new insight not only into a cherished masterwork and its author but also into our evolving relationship with the briny deep—from whale hunters to climate refugees.

    From the devastating attack on Pearl Harbour to the decisive triumph of the Allies at Guadalcanal, the entry of Japan and America to the fighting changed the course of World War II completely.JAPAN'S DEADLY OFFENSIVE, AMERICA'S DECISIVE VICTORYWritten by historian, author and broadcaster James Holland, THE PACIFIC WAR 1941-1943 is an essential, accessible introduction to the battles that defined Pacific conflict in World War II.