With our access to Google Maps, Global Positioning Systems, and Atlases that cover all regions and terrains and tell us precisely how to get from one place to another, we tend to forget there was ever a time when the world was unknown and uncharted--a mystery waiting to be solved.
This is the story of saltpeter, the vital but mysterious substance craved by governments from the Tudors to the Victorians as an 'inestimable treasure.
As the United States grew into an empire in the late nineteenth century, notions like "e;sea power"e; derived not only from fleets, bases, and decisive battles but also from a scientific effort to understand and master the ocean environment.
Jahrhundertelang träumten europäische Seefahrer vergeblich von einer Ostroute durchs sibirische Eismeer: Willem Barents und Vitus Bering erlagen nach ihren »Entdeckungen« Spitzbergens und der Beringstraße den Strapazen ihrer Expeditionen, und selbst der erfolgsverwöhnte James Cook scheiterte an der Suche nach dem östlichen Ausgang aus den Eismassen.
Finalist for the 2017 Washington State Book Award in General Nonfiction / HistoryThe plaque said this was the winter fishing hut of Thurdur Einarsdttir, one of Iceland's greatest fishing captains, and that she lived from 1777 to 1863.
Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility.
The steamboat evokes images of leisurely travel, genteel gambling, and lively commerce, but behind the romanticized view is an engineering marvel that led the way for the steam locomotive.
Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility.
Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility.
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels by Robert Kerr is an 18 volume set that contains the complete history of the origin and progress of navigation, discovery, and commerce, by sea and land.
Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility.
This is the second of a pair of volumes publishing the unedited full reports of Schomburgk's travels in Guiana between 1835 and 1844, previously available only in greatly abridged and heavily edited versions.
Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility.
This book, in two volumes, contains an annotated English translation of the Historia da Ethiopia by the Spanish Jesuit missionary priest Pedro Paez (Pero Pais in Portuguese), 1564-1622, who worked in the Portuguese padroado missions, first in India and then in Ethiopia, long thought to be the kingdom of the legendary Prester John.
Sir Joseph Banks was one of the great figures of Georgian England, best known for participating as naturalist in Cook's Endeavour voyage (1768-71), as a patron of science and as the longest-serving President of the Royal Society (1778-1820).
Unlike many narratives about the Czech lands, which place them on the periphery of their own history, this study considers Czechs as central characters, looking both east and west to find their place in the early modern world.
Christopher Nicholson vividly describes the construction and history to the present day of some of the world's most famous lighthouses in this classic book which has become the standard work on the subject.
This is the story of saltpeter, the vital but mysterious substance craved by governments from the Tudors to the Victorians as an 'inestimable treasure.
Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility.
In 1845, British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin (1786-1847) embarked on his third and final expedition into the Canadian Arctic to force the Northwest Passage.
Commended for the 2011 Keith Matthews Award From its creation in 1910, the Royal Canadian Navy was marked by political debate over the countrys need for a naval service.
The Command of the Ocean describes with unprecedented authority and scholarship the rise of Britain to naval greatness, and the central place of the Navy and naval activity in the life of the nation and government.
Despite the fact that the vast majority of the earth's surface is made up of oceans, there has been surprisingly little work by geographers which critically examines the ocean-space and our knowledge and perceptions of it.
For more than 30 years the Nile river gunboat was an indispensable tool of empire, policing the great river and acting as floating symbols of British imperial power.
The Pacific of the early eighteenth century was not a single ocean but a vast and varied waterscape, a place of baffling complexity, with 25,000 islands and seemingly endless continental shorelines.
The America's Cup has always been a hotbed of unbridled ambition, personal agendas, intrigue, spying and, more recently, hard-fought court cases and that's before the boats even get out on the water to race.
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The first account of Britain’s convoys during the Napoleonic Wars—showing how the protection of trade played a decisive role in victory During the Napoleonic Wars thousands of merchant ships crisscrossed narrow seas and wide oceans, protected by Britain’s warships.
Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility.
Known to seafarers as the Devils Jaw, Point Honda has lured ships to its dangerous rocks on Californias coast for centuries, but its worst disaster occurred on 8 September 1923.
