No one but a madman would put to sea in such conditions. A blizzard cut visibility to yards. Long Island Sound was galloping whitecaps. But in this second year of the war of 1812, conditions like these spelled opportunity to Captain Josiah Peabody.His mission: break the British Blockade. The only thing in his favor was surprise. Who would expect a Yankee frigate in Long Island Sound at night?

Sailing in the Caribbean, Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, is once again pursuing a chimera. A rich French prize ship he'd left at anchor at Dominica has gone missing, along with six of his sailors. What starts as a straightforward search for it, and them, from Hispaniola to Barbados, far down the Antilles, leads Lewrie to a gruesome discovery on the Dry Tortugas and to a vile cabal of the most pitiless and depraved pirates ever to sail under the "Jolly Roger" . . . and the suspicion that one of his trusted hands just may be the worst of them all!Against his will---again---the usually irrepressible Lewrie is made his superiors' "cat's-paw" once more, and his covert mission this time is to go up the Mississippi in enemy-held Spanish Louisiana to the romantic but sordid port of New Orleans in search of pirates and prize, where one false step could betray Lewrie and his small party as spies. Beguilements, betrayal, and death lurk 'round every corner of the Vieux Carre, and it's up to Lewrie's quick but cynical to win the day wits for their survival and wreak a very personal vengeance on his foes!

The Christmas Wreck (1886) is not a typical Christmas story. Stockton reminds us there's no use being in a hurry for a good wind or for Christmas, they'll both come when they're ready. Old Silas tells his passenger a tale as they are waylaid with slack sails.

Further adventures from the much–loved Captain Blood, the 'Robin Hood' of the Spanish Seas. In his latest exploits, The Chronicles of Captain Blood takes him to new adventures with as much excitement and swashbuckling adventure as ever before. Winning invaluable treasures, rescuing his crew from almost certain death and saving an English settlement are all in a day's work for this remarkable hero of land and sea.

In this ninth installment in the Hornblower series, the incomparable Horatio Hornblower, recently knighted and settled in as squire of the village of Smallbridge, has been designated commodore of his own squadron of ships, led by the two-decker Nonsuch and bound for the Baltic. It is 1812, and Hornblower has been ordered to do anything and everything possible, diplomatically and militarily, to protect the Baltic trade and to stop the spread of Napoleon's empire into Sweden and Russia. Though he has set sail a hero, one misstep may ruin his chances of ever becoming an admiral. Hostile armies, seductive Russian royalty, nautical perils such as ice-bound bays, assassins in the imperial palace—Hornblower must conquer all before he can return home to his beloved new wife and son, as his instructions are to sacrifice every man and ship under his command rather than surrender ground to Napoleon.

The fifth book in the Nathaniel Drinkwater seriesCommander Drinkwater's experience of battle was what mattered when Earl St Vincent entrusted Drinkwater with his new command — as escort to the Arctic whaling fleet on its annual expedition to the Greenland seas. With the French established as masters of the war upon trade, violent action ensued.

It did not take the American reporter long to sense the mystery aboard the freighter plodding eastern seas.

As Tom Dudley took his turn on watch, he looked with horror on the bodies of his crew.

Their ribs and hip bones were already showing through their wasting flesh. There were angry, ulcerating sores on their elbows, knees and feet, their lips were cracked and their tongues blackened and swollen.

They had continued to live on the turtle-flesh for a week, even though some of the fat became putrid in the fierce heat. Tom cut out the worst parts and threw them overboard, but they devoured the rest, and when the flesh was finished they chewed the bones and leathery skin.

They ate the last rancid scraps of it on the evening of 17 July. Tom looked at the others. ‘If no boat comes soon, something must be done…’

On 5 July 1884 the yacht Mignonette set sail from Southampton bound for Sydney. Halfway through their voyage, Captain Tom Dudley and his crew of three men were beset by a monstrous storm off the coast of Africa.

After four days of battling towering seas and hurricane gales, their yacht was finally crushed by a ferocious forty-foot wave.

The survivors were cast adrift a thousand miles from the nearest landfall in an open thirteen-foot dinghy, without provisions, water or shelter from the scorching sun. When, after twenty-four days, they were finally rescued by a passing yacht, the Moctezuma, only three men were left and they were in an appalling condition.

The ordeal they endured and the trial that followed their eventual return to England held the whole nation — from the lowliest ship’s deckhand to Queen Victoria herself — spellbound during the following winter.

From yellowing newspaper files, personal letters and diaries, and first-person accounts of the principals, Neil Hanson has pieced together the extraordinary tale of Captain Tom Dudley, the Mignonette and her crew. Their routine voyage culminated in unimaginable hardship and horror, during which the survivors of the storm had to make some impossible decisions. This is the true story of the voyage and the subsequent court case that outlawed for ever a practice followed since men first put to the ocean in boats: the custom of the sea.

Gordon Korman’s adventurous DIVE trilogy comes to an action-packed conclusion with THE DANGER.The kids have found sunken treasure. The adults want to keep it for themselves. But there’s a chance that both will lose it if they don’t act fast.A thrilling, shark-infested conclusion to Gordon Korman’s underwater trilogy.

Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho returns to England after the capture of Martinique, and finds a brief respite from war and politics in the arms of his mistress, Lady Catherine Somervell. But the affairs of nations allow little time for personal happiness, and to his surprise and dismay Bolitho is ordered almost immediately to the Indian Ocean, where the shadow of a new conflict already darkens the horizon as the old enemy, France, forges an uneasy alliance with America and threatens British trade routes. Haunted by the deaths in their country's service of Nelson and Collingwood, and by his own vivid memories of shipwreck and tragedy, Bolitho is well aware of the price of admiralty, and for the first time considers the possibility of life not only beyond the reef but beyond the sea itself.

It’s late 1915 and the industrial nations still have not geared up for war. Shortages of munitions leave soldiers hanging on barbed wire in the fields. The war in France is at a stalemate, both sides finding it impossible to advance, and spending tens of thousands of lives on the discovery. Richard Baker is in the front line with his battalion, learning how to fight this new war. While the generals, well behind him, are only focussed on finding a way to let the cavalry loose in another Charge of the Light Brigade, reaching for glory. At sea, Simon Sturton continues to make a name for himself as one of the new breed of destroyermen, while Christopher Adams has overcome his fall from grace sufficiently to be posted to Black Prince cruiser, part of the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow in the months leading up to the long-awaited ‘Great Smash’ in the North Sea.

THE DEEP is the second book in Gordon’s third smash-hit adventure series, the DIVE trilogy. In book one, we met four teens who were accepted on an internship with the prestigious Poseidon Oceanographic Institute, an internship program that consists mainly of utterly ignoring them.Concluding that they were selected not for their skills, but for their lack of them, our dive team comes to the conclusion that their Poseidon superiors are up to no good. Now the kids are determined to discover the lost pirate ship, sunk in this area, and find any possible treasures before the Poseidon team can.Unfortunately, there are many dangers in the waters, human and natural, and some of them may be more than the inexperienced team can handle.

Sharks, shipwreck, and sunken treasure in the latest adventure trilogy from Gordon Korman.Four kids are on a marine expedition for the summer, diving to explore an underwater habitat that’s just been altered by a seismic event. What they find, though, is much more than fish — it’s sunken treasure. Can they salvage it without anyone else getting to it first? Will the prospect of wealth set them against one another? And what about those sharks….DIVE is another action-packed trilogy from Gordon Korman. The narrative will shift between an account of two kids caught in the shipwreck and the story of the four kids fighting over and desperately trying to get the treasure.

В результате произошедшего землетрясения на виду у английского торгового судна появился неизвестный остров…

A Short Story from The Fighting Anthonys Series

In the spring of 1797 Richard Bolitho brings the 100-gun Euryalus home to Falmouth to be flagship of the hastily formed squadron which has been chosen to make the first British re-entry to the Mediterranean for nearly a year. As flag captain, Bolitho is made to contend with the unyielding attitudes of his new admiral, as well as the devious requirements of the squadron's civilian advisor. England is still stunned by the naval mutiny at Spithead, in which Bolitho's admiral was personally involved, and as the squadron sets sail the air is already alive with rumour of an even greater uprising in the ships at the Nore. Only when the squadron is drawn to a bloody embrace with the enemy does the admiral see the strength in Bolitho's trust and care for his men – but by then it is almost too late for any of them.

It is 1811 and Napoleon's French Empire dominates Europe. Desperate to stem the encroaching French tide and avert war with the emerging power of the United States, the Royal Navy orders Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater to the Chesapeake Bay to heal the rift between London and Washington.Quite by chance, on the banks of the Potomac, Drinkwater discovers the first clue to a bold plan by which the U.S. could defeat the Royal Navy, collapse the British government and utterly destroy the British cause. Amid personal crisis, Drinkwater takes command of a squadron sent against the Americans in the South Atlantic, audaciously risking his reputation and, in a climactic confrontation, coming face-to-face with the horror of an interminable war.