Voyages That Changed The World

Voyages that Changed the World tells, chronologically, the stories of the most momentous sea voyages in history and, in doing so, provides an intriguing look at the unveiling of our world. Each chapter describes the background to a remarkable voyage or series of voyages, the events and personalities of the journey, and the historical consequences. Liberally illustrated, the story behind each voyage is accompanied by maps of the routes, and illustrations and photographs of adventurers, explorers, seafarers and their vessels.

Christopher Columbus and his crew had been sailing for five weeks into uncharted waters before finally reaching land one blazing hot day in 1492. It was a difficult journey that many predicted would be impossible, but Columbus proved them wrong and his voyage changed the world. Columbus had done it: he was the first man to reach the East by sailing west, and he was heralded as the Father of the New World. Columbus would take three more voyages to different places, but he remains best known as the pioneer who opened routes to the exploration and settlement of the Americas. Book jacket.

From the mid-fifteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, the driving force behind world exploration was Europe's growing passion for the luxuries of life and for discovering the uncharted territories that provided these luxuries. We know the shape of the world today because ships, driven by wind and human muscle, were navigated into every last bay and estuary on Earth, searching for this wealth. The ships that made these voyages were the products of a long evolution, and their navigators were the beneficiaries of centuries of accumulated experience. Voyages recounts the extraordinary feats of more than twenty daring maritime explorers, including Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Martin Frobisher, and James Cook. In narrating these explorers' tales, Gordon Miller touches on the great themes of maritime history, including the development of new maritime technologies, the rise and fall of the maritime empires, and the discovery of new continents. Exquisitely illustrated with almost 100 of the author's paintings and many detailed maps and drawings of sailing ships, Voyages recounts the history of Europe's early navigators as they ventured into the unknown, braving uncharted territory. In carrying out their voyages, these ships and sailors defined the true dimensions of the oceans and coastlines of the world.

George Forster's A Voyage Round the World presents a wealth of geographic, scientific, and ethnographic knowledge uncovered by Cook's second journey of exploration in the Pacific (1772-1775). Accompanying his father, the ship's naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster, on the voyage, George proved a knowledgeable and adept observer. The lively, elegant prose and critical detail of his account, based loosely on his father's journal, make it one of the finest works of eighteenth-century travel literature and an account of prime importance in the history of European contact with Pacific peoples. The Forsters' publications reveal the sophistication and enthusiasm they brought to their observation of Polynesian peoples as well as a sensitivity to the moral ambiguities of contact. The two volumes of George Forster's work include substantially richer descriptions of encounters with island inhabitants than either his father's classic work (Observations Made during a Voyage round the World, UH Press, 1996) or Cook's official narrative, and its confident, even visionary, style incorporates a good deal of polemic, particularly in its criticism of the treatment of islanders by Cook's crew. In addition to the range and depth of its anthropological considerations, it provides a thrilling account of life aboard one of Cook's vessels. In its author's German translation, this work becomes a classic of natural history writing, but its original English version has long been neglected by anglophone scholars. This new scholarly edition makes this important book readily available for the first time since its initial publication more than two centuries ago. But it also presents the work in fresh terms, making it more accessible and relevant to a contemporary audience. The valuable introduction and annotations draw on the wide range of anthropological and ethnohistorical scholarship published since the 1960s and contextualize the book in relation to both the cultures of Oceania documented by the Forsters and the history of European voyaging in the Pacific. Appendixes include a translation of the introduction to the German edition and the polemical pamphlets by George Forster and the ship's astronomer William Wales, in which some of the book's more controversial claims were debated. A Voyage Round the World brings the disciplines of history and anthropology to bear on Cook's voyages in an illuminating and readable fashion. This edition will help complete the corpus of basic documents on Cook's voyages--a crucial resource for researchers in cultural, Pacific, and maritime history; archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians; and most recently for scholars engaged in revisionist interpretations of eighteenth-century exploration and colonization.

An illuminating and lively narrative of Charles Darwin’s formative years and adventurous voyage aboard the H.M.S. Beagle. Winner of the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Biography/Memoir Charles Darwin—alongside Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein—ranks among the world's most famous scientists. In popular imagination, he peers at us from behind a bushy white Old Testament beard. This image of Darwin the Sage, however, crowds out the vital younger man whose curiosities, risk-taking, and travels aboard HMS Beagle would shape his later theories and served as the foundation of his scientific breakthroughs. Though storied, the Beagle's voyage is frequently misunderstood, its mission and geographical breadth unacknowledged. The voyage's activities associated with South America—particularly its stop in the Galapagos archipelago, off Ecuador’s coast—eclipse the fact that the Beagle, sailing in Atlantic, Pacific and Indian ocean waters, also circumnavigated the globe. Mere happenstance placed Darwin aboard the Beagle—an invitation to sail as a conversation companion on natural-history topics for the ship's depression-prone captain. Darwin was only twenty-two years old, an unproven, unknown, aspiring geologist when the ship embarked on what stretched into its five-year voyage. Moreover, conducting marine surveys of distance ports and coasts, the Beagle's purposes were only inadvertently scientific. And with no formal shipboard duties or rank, Darwin, after arranging to meet the Beagle at another port, often left the ship to conduct overland excursions. Those outings, lasting weeks, even months, took him across mountains, pampas, rainforests, and deserts. An expert horseman and marksman, he won the admiration of gauchos he encountered along the way. Yet another rarely acknowledged aspect of Darwin's Beagle travels, he also visited, often lingered in, cities—including Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santiago, Lima, Sydney, and Cape Town; and left colorful, often sharply opinionated, descriptions of them and his interactions with their residents. In the end, Darwin spent three-fifths of his five-year "voyage" on land—three years and three months on terra firma versus a total 533 days on water. Acclaimed historian Tom Chaffin reveals young Darwin in all his complexities—the brashness that came from his privileged background, the Faustian bargain he made with Argentina's notorious caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas, his abhorrence of slavery, and his ambition to carve himself a place amongst his era's celebrated travelers and intellectual giants. Drawing on a rich array of sources— in a telling of an epic story that surpasses in breadth and intimacy the naturalist's own Voyage of the Beagle—Chaffin brings Darwin's odyssey to vivid life.

I was born just before World War II began, and I am very surprised now that I am much older how much the world has changed and how I had to change careers with it to be successful. I wrote this book initially as a present to tell my grandchildren about the world I grew up in. I was fortunate to live in a beautiful small town in Massachusetts called Nahant. This book is my memory of how I grew up as a young fisherman and helped build several lobster fishing boats under the direction of a first-generation Italian lobsterman. I was paid to travel to Puerto Rico, war-torn Germany, England on a former troop ship, and South Africa where I discovered the evils of apartheid first hand plus the major ports of Eastern Africa and how they lived much different from us! After arriving home, I made two trips through the Panama Canal and visited all of the major cities on the west coast of South America. Two years later, I graduated from the academy and received a license to operate huge merchant ships and worked on some of the nicest cruise ships in the world to the historic ports of Europe, Greece, Egypt, North Africa, India, Pakistan, and Burma. Traveling the world gave me an education that helped shape the rest if my life. Eventually, I left the sea for shipyard work where I helped build the world's first nuclear-powered Navy cruiser and eight nuclear submarines. Eventually, the Cold War was over, and I moved on to nuclear-powered electricity-generating plants ashore with a Boston engineering firm. I was fortunate to marry Lily, a wonderful woman from Honduras born in a jungle hospital of United Brands, who unfortunately passed away. We were fortunate to raise two great kids: Jim, who is legally blind, and Pat, who now travels the world with the internationally known platinum record band Extreme. Many people and adventures were described. Many other people and places were discussed!

When Columbus was born in the mid-fifteenth century, Europe was largely isolated from the rest of the Old World - Africa and Asia - and ignorant of the existence of the world of the Western Hemisphere. The voyages of Christopher Columbus opened a period of European exploration and empire building that breached the boundaries of those isolated worlds and changed the course of human history. This book describes the life and times of Christopher Columbus on the 500th aniversary of his first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492. Since ancient times, Europeans had dreamed of discovering new routes to the untold riches of Asia and the Far East, what set Columbus apart from these explorers was his single-minded dedication to finding official support to make that dream a reality. More than a simple description of the man, this new book places Columbus in a very broad context of European and world history. Columbus's story is not just the story of one man's rise and fall. Seen in its broader context, his life becomes a prism reflecting the broad range of human experience for the past five hundred years. Respected historians of medieval Spain and early America, the authors examine Columbus's quest for funds, first in Portugal and then in Spain, where he finally won royal backing for his scheme. Through his successful voyage in 1492 and three subsequent journeys to the new world Columbus reached the pinnacle of fame and wealth, and yet he eventually lost royal support through his own failings. William and Carla Rahn Phillips discuss the reasons for this fall and describe the empire created by the Spaniards in the lands across the ocean, even though neither they, nor anyone else in Europe, know precisely where or what those lands were. In examining the birth of a new world, this book reveals much about the times that produced these intrepid explorers.

Nine true adventures of secret New World discoveries. Includes Queen Hatshepsut, King Solomon, Marco Polo, Zheng He, Amerigo Vespucci, and many more. Epic voyages that changed the world forever; thrilling entertainment for general readers; embarrassing facts that the pros have missed. Features Sherlock Holmes of American History.