The word maritime refers to anything to do with the sea, especially related to seafaring, both military and commercial. The most well-known maritime disaster is the sinking of the Titanic. We have been fascinated with what happened leading up to and following its sinking for more than 100 years now. When sailing, human error, mechanical error, and the weather can all play a role in whether a trip is successful. If any of those aspects go wrong, it can leave you at the mercy of the sea. With humans carting the seas for at least 50,000 years, there's no shortage of stories of the trips going wrong.
Another famous maritime disaster is the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior on November 10th, 1975. This year will mark the 50th anniversary of the accident. At the time it was built, the Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest ship working on the Great Lakes. Over its 17 years in service, it set the record for the largest iron haul many times. It remains the largest ship to sink in Lake Superior. The Mariner's Church holds a memorial each year, ringing its bells 29 times for the 29 men lost in the accident. They have an additional ceremony planned this year to mark the exact moment the ship was lost.
All of these selections are narrative non-fiction books, meaning that even though they are true stories, they read like narrative fiction novels. This makes the stories easy to read and very engaging. If you're interested in more narrative non-fiction books, check out our Narrative Non-Fiction browsing section in the Adult Library!
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
David Grann
On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive with an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as "the prize of all the oceans," it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.
But then... six months later, another decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes - they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen.
Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica's Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night
Julian Sancton
In August 1897, the young Belgian commandant Adrien de Gerlache set sail for a three-year expedition aboard the good ship Belgica with dreams of glory. His destination was the uncharted end of the icy continent of Antarctica.
But de Gerlache’s plans to be first to the magnetic South Pole would swiftly go awry. After a series of costly setbacks, he is faced with the decision to turn back in defeat and spare his men the devastating Antarctic winter, or recklessly chase fame by sailing deeper into the freezing waters. De Gerlache sailed on, and soon the Belgica was stuck fast in the icy hold of the Bellingshausen Sea. When the sun set on the magnificent polar landscape one last time, the ship’s occupants were condemned to months of endless night. In the darkness, plagued by a mysterious illness and besieged by monotony, they descended into madness.
As the Belgica’s men teetered on the brink, de Gerlache relied increasingly on two young officers, the lone American Dr. Frederick Cook, and the ship’s first mate, soon-to-be legendary Roald Amundsen. Together, they would plan a last-ditch, nearly certain-to-fail escape from the ice—one that would either etch their names in history or doom them to a terrible fate at the ocean’s bottom.
The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald
John U. Bacon
For three decades following World War II, the Great Lakes overtook Europe as the epicenter of global economic strength. The region was the beating heart of the world economy, possessing all the power and prestige Silicon Valley does today. And no ship represented the apex of the American Century better than the 729-foot-long Edmund Fitzgerald—the biggest, best, and most profitable ship on the Lakes.
But on November 10, 1975, as the “storm of the century” threw 100 mile-per-hour winds and 50-foot waves on Lake Superior, the Mighty Fitz found itself at the worst possible place, at the worst possible time. When she sank, she took all 29 men on board down with her, leaving the tragedy shrouded in mystery for a half century.
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
Nathaniel Philbrick
In 1820, the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, it was repeatedly rammed and sunk by an eighty-ton bull sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, made for the 3,000-mile-distant coast of South America in three tiny boats. During ninety days at sea under horrendous conditions, the survivors clung to life as one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear.
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
Erik Larson
On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. He knew, moreover, that his ship - the fastest then in service - could outrun any threat.
Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small - hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more--all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history.
The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
Sebastian Junger
October 1991. It was "the perfect storm"--a tempest that may happen only once in a century--a nor'easter created by so rare a combination of factors that it could not possibly have been worse. Creating waves ten stories high and winds of 120 miles an hour, the storm whipped the sea to inconceivable levels few people on Earth have ever witnessed. Few, except the six-man crew of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat tragically headed towards its hellish center.
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About the Author
Jacqueline is a Circulation Clerk in the Adult Library who started in 2024. She enjoys reading epic fantasy books and cozy rom-coms; and believes the best way to read is with the physical book and the audiobook together. When she’s not reading she also loves going to the movies.
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