Nautical History

We have two sections in the store about this general topic. For purposes of location, vintage books are labeled nautical history, and newer books are put in the Ships, Boats, & Submarines section.

To most of us (the uninitiated), the sailing ships of the past are a thing of myth and romance. We see paintings of graceful ships' hulls cutting through majestic waves, rigging taut and sails billowing. We imagine the freedom of the sea and it stirs something deep within us. There's a yearning to test our mettle, feel our smallness under the open sky and on the open sea, experience the power of the waves as they crash on the deck during a gale.

A lot of nautical fiction tends to focus on the narrow European "age of sail," especially the age of discovery and the epic sea battles of the Napoleanic wars. But, of course, Maritime history is much broader than that. It's an overarching subject that includes lots of topics, like fishing, whaling, international maritime law, naval history, the history of ships, ship design, shipbuilding, the history of navigation, the history of the various maritime-related sciences (oceanography, cartography, hydrography, etc.), sea exploration, maritime economics and trade, shipping, yachting, seaside resorts, the history of lighthouses and aids to navigation, maritime themes in literature, maritime themes in art, the social history of sailors and passengers and sea-related communities.

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48 Items found Print
Active Filters: 11th grade (Ages 16-17)
Admiral David Glasgow Farragut
by Chester G. Hearn
from US Naval Institute Press
for 9th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
All Hands Aloft!
by Lou A. Schmitt
from Howell-North
for 9th-Adult
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
American Ship Models and How to Build Them
by V. R. Grimwood, foreword by Howard I. Chapelle
from Bonanza Books
for 9th-Adult
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Arts of the Sailor
by Hervey Garrett Smith
Reprint from Dover Publications
for 5th-Adult
in Ships, Boats & Submarines (Location: HISV-SHIP)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Blackbeard
by Dan Parry
from Thunder's Mouth Press
for 8th-12th grade
in Pirates (Location: HISV-PIRATE)
$7.00 (1 in stock)
Blow Ye Winds Westerly
by Elizabeth Gemming
1st edition from Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
for 9th-Adult
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
$9.00 (1 in stock)
Brendan Voyage
Modern Library Exploration
by Tim Severin
from Modern Library
for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$19.00
Captain Cook
by Alistair MacLean
from Doubleday & Company
for 9th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
David Farragut, Sea Fighter
by Marie Mudra, illustrated by Douglas Gorsline
from Julian Messner
for 9th-12th grade
in Vintage History & Biographies (Location: VIN-HIS)
Design Line: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
by Chris Oxlade, Edited by Jenny Broom, Illustrated by Mike Lemanski
from Candlewick Press
for 2nd-Adult
in Oversized Science Books (Location: SCI-OVER)
$9.00 (1 in stock)
Discovery of the Titanic
by Robert Ballard
from Warner/Madison Press
for 6th-12th grade
in Titanic & 20th Century Disasters (Location: HISW-20DIS)
Golden Age of Sail
by Amy Handy
from Todtri Productions Limited
for 7th-Adult
in Ships, Boats & Submarines (Location: HISV-SHIP)
Guns Off Cape Ann
by Kenneth Poolman
from Evans Brothers Limited
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage History & Biographies (Location: VIN-HIS)
History of Pirates
by Nigel Cawthorne
from Chartwell Books
for 8th-Adult
in Pirates (Location: HISV-PIRATE)
Illustrated History of Ships and Boats
by Lionel Casson
from Doubleday & Company
for 7th-Adult
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Illustrated Wreck of the Whaleship Essex
by Owen Chase
200th Anniversary from SeaWolf Press
for 9th-Adult
in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW)
$7.18
In Yankee Windjammers
by Charles Nordhoff, edited by his grandson of the same name
from Dodd, Mead & Co.
for 9th-Adult
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
John Paul Jones
by Samuel Eliot Morison
from Little, Brown & Company
for 10th-Adult
1960 Biography Pulitzer Prize
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
Kid on the River
by Dean Nichols
1st edition from Binford & Mort Publishing
for 8th-Adult
in Pacific States (Location: HISV-PNW)
Lexington Goes Down
by A. A. Hoehling
from Prentice Hall
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage History & Biographies (Location: VIN-HIS)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Log of Christopher Columbus
by Christopher Columbus, translated by Robert Fuson
1992 Printing from International Marine / McGraw-Hill
for 9th-Adult
in Renaissance & Reformation Literature (Location: LIT3-REN)
Long Ships: A Saga of the Viking Age
by Frans G. Bengtsson, translated from the Swedish by Michael Meyer
7th Printing from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
for 9th-Adult
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
$60.00 (1 in stock)
Longitude
by Dava Sobel
1st edition from Walker and Company
for 10th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
Longitude
by Dava Sobel
1st edition from Penguin Books
for 10th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$4.00 (2 in stock)
Lost at Sea
by Ronald Pearsall
from Smithmark Publishers
for 7th-Adult
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
Mayflower II
from Plimoth Plantation Publication
for 6th-12th grade
in Ships, Boats & Submarines (Location: HISV-SHIP)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Mr Bligh's Bad Language
by Greg Dening
from Cambridge University
for 11th-Adult
in History for Adults (Location: ADU-HIS)
Mutiny of the Bounty
by Sir John Barrow
1st U.S. ed from David R. Godine
for 8th-Adult
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
Naval Warfare
Civil War Chronicles
by John C. Wideman
from MetroBooks
for 7th-Adult
in American Civil War Era (1850-1865) (Location: HISA-19CW)
$7.00 (1 in stock)
Paddle-Wheel Days in California
from Stanford University Press
for 8th-Adult
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Pictorial History of American Ships
by John & Alice Durant
from A.S. Barnes and Co.
for 10th-Adult
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
Pirate Ship: 1660-1730
by Angus Konstam, illustrated by Tony Bryan
from Osprey Publishing
for 7th-Adult
in Pirates (Location: HISV-PIRATE)
$9.00 (1 in stock)
Sailing-Ship
by Romola & R. C. Anderson
from Bonanza Books
for 9th-Adult
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
$5.50 (1 in stock)
San Francisco Bay
by John Haskell Kemble
from Cornell Maritime Press
for 7th-12th grade
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
San Francisco Bay
by John Haskell Kemble
1978 Reissue from Bonanza Books
for 7th-12th grade
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Ships
by Tom McCluskie
from Chartwell Books
for 10th-Adult
in Ships, Boats & Submarines (Location: HISV-SHIP)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Ships Visual Encyclopedia
by David Ross
from Amber Books
for 3rd-Adult
in Ships, Boats & Submarines (Location: HISV-SHIP)
Shipwrecks of the Pacific Coast
by James A. Gibbs
2nd edition from Binford & Mort Publishing
for 9th-Adult
in Pacific States (Location: HISV-PNW)
South
by Ernest Shackleton
from Living Book Press
Expedition Memoir for 10th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$17.99
Tale of a Shipwreck
by James Norman Hall, illustrated by W. Alister MacDonald
from Houghton Mifflin
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage History & Biographies (Location: VIN-HIS)
Tall Ships
by Maldwin Drummond, illustrated by Mike Willoughby, Foreword by H.R.H the Duke of Edinburgh
First American Edition from G.P. Putnam's Sons
for 10th-Adult
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
$15.00 (1 in stock)
The Bounty
by Caroline Alexander
Reprint from Viking Press
for 11th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Twentieth Century Sea Power
for 7th-12th grade
in Clearance: History & Geography (Location: ZCLE-HIS)
$1.00 (1 in stock)
Two Years Before the Mast
Signet Classics
by Richard Henry Dana Jr.
from Signet Classics
Autobiographical Narrative for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$7.95
Two Years Before the Mast
by Richard Henry Dana Jr., illustrated by E. Boyd Smith
from SeaWolf Press
Autobiographical Narrative for 10th-Adult
in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW)
Vancouver's Discovery of Puget Sound
by Edmond S. Meany
from Binford & Mort Publishing
for 10th-Adult
in Pacific States (Location: HISV-PNW)
Voyage of the Beagle
by Charles Darwin, abridged by Millicent E. Selsam and illustrated by Anthony Ravielli
from Harper & Row
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Nonfiction (Location: VIN-NFIC)
Wooden Ships and Iron Men
by Clifford Lindsey Alderman
from Walker and Company
for 8th-Adult
in Nautical History (Location: VIN-NAUT)
$4.00 (1 in stock)