Shipmates

This is the tie-in book to a two part BBC 1 documentary series to be screened at 9.00pm in October and which will end on the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar on 21st October. Chris Terrill is famous for his fly on the wall documentaries which have been watched by millions and received wide critical acclaim. We have had HMS Brilliant and The Cruise (audience reached 11 million). Chris has based himself for the last few months in the very heart of the modern day naval experience. We will see: a Royal Naval Chaplain exorcising a haunted barracks in Portsmouth, a vodka-fuelled Trafalgar Day celebration in the British Embassy in the Moscow in 2004, a Polaris submarine crossing the Atlantic on an exercise in which it will 'pretend' to nuke America, the patrol of the frigate HMS Chatham in the Gulf, suddenly diverted to Sri Lanka after the Tsunami and the Fleet Review, where HMS Chatham in honour of her humanitarian role in Asia, will lead the entire assembly of a hundred warships, British and foreign, down the Solent. Chris is the only film maker to be granted exclusive, behind the scenes access by the Navy this year. During the filming Chris will capture the heart and soul of the sailors aboard, and on shore: there will be plenty of irreverence, practical jokes and laughs, and the human reality of the families left behind for months on end as warships and submarines go on extended tours of duty. This will be the fullest ever account of the Modern Navy in a year when the Trafalgar Day celebrations and the Fleet review will attract an avalanche of publicity.

In late 1944, 78 U.S. Navy sailors and officers climbed aboard a ship just 150 feet long and 23 feet wide, and headed toward the sound of gunfire. One of a class of gunboats known as "mighty midgets," LCS 52 carried an arsenal equal to ships twice its size. Yet its shallow draft enabled it to maneuver to within a few hundred feet of any beach. Packed inside the tiny craft, the diverse crew were farmers, students, cooks and teachers. They ranged from age 17 to middle-aged--a few had seen combat in the Atlantic and the Pacific. This book tells the story of the ship's extensive service in World War II's Pacific Theater. Most of the crew survived the war, as did LCS 52 itself, serving in the U.S. Navy and Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force until 1958, when it was decommissioned and used for artillery practice. A roll call of crew members is included, with biographical information when available.

This book analyzes the lives of Africans and their descendants in Montevideo and Buenos Aires from the late colonial era to the first decades of independence.

A fascinating account of varied careers, providing a rich snapshot of the later eighteenth-century sailing navy in microcosm.

In this New York Times bestseller, the author of Lafayette in the Somewhat United States "brings the [Puritan] era wickedly to life" (Washington Post). To this day, America views itself as a Puritan nation, but Sarah Vowell investigates what that means-and what it should mean. What she discovers is something far different from what their uptight shoebuckles- and-corn reputation might suggest-a highly literate, deeply principled, and surprisingly feisty people, whose story is filled with pamphlet feuds, witty courtroom dramas, and bloody vengeance. Vowell takes us from the modern-day reenactment of an Indian massacre to the Mohegan Sun casino, from old-timey Puritan poetry, where "righteousness" is rhymed with "wilderness," to a Mayflower-themed waterslide. Throughout, The Wordy Shipmates is rich in historical fact, humorous insight, and social commentary by one of America's most celebrated voices.

Reproduction of the original: The Two Shipmates by W.H.G. Kingston

South Sea Shipmates by John Arthur Barry follows an extraordinary and sight-filled adventure over the South Sea in search of treasure. Excerpt: "Barry was singularly lovable, and made friends wherever he went. Though brave and adventurous, he was gentle and kindly by nature, and no roughness of life and companionship ever made him other than a gentleman in the best sense. He seemed to have a gift for getting on with all sorts and conditions of men on land and sea, and he sketches their various characters with sympathy and insight, and no little sense of humor."