History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks

The Viking warship of King Cnut the Great. Henry VIII's the Mary Rose. Captain John Franklin's doomed HMS Terror. The German battleship The Bismarck destroyed by Allied forces. This is the story of some of the greatest underwater discoveries of all time, from the Bronze Age world of Troy and Caesar's Rome, through Viking warriors and the court of Henry VIII, to the exploration of the Arctic and World War Two. A rich and exciting narrative, this is not just the story of those ships and the people who sailed on them, the cargo and treasure they carried and their tragic fate. This is also the story of the spread of people, religion and ideas around the world, a story of colonialism and migration which continues today. Drawing on decades of experience excavating shipwrecks around the world, renowned maritime archeologist David Gibbins reveals the riches beneath the waves and shows us how the treasures found there can be a porthole to the past to tell a new story about the world and its underwater secrets.

Absolutely fascinating, beautifully written and impeccably researched. David Gibbin's deep dive into maritime archaeology is masterful and entrancing - this is big history at its best., From every corner of our ship-hungry oceans, from simple oar-propelled boats of the Bronze Age to great 19th century steam-powered juggernauts of trade and war, the author (an esteemed archaeologist) gives us a history of the world in a sea-salted way that has never been done before. A bravura work, insightfully woven, grippingly told and beautifully illustrated., I love this book. It shows the talents of the researcher married to the skills of a master storyteller, and every page recreates the frisson of my youth at the anticipation of a discovery or a mystery revealed. This book will be treasured by all who are hooked on the mystique of loss, the romance of discovery and the sense that shipwrecks give of having captured a moment in time.

David Gibbins is one of the world's foremost maritime archaeologists as well as being a Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author. His thirteen novels so far have sold over two million copies and are published in thirty languages. He has investigated numerous shipwrecks ranging in date from early prehistory to modern times, including Greek and Roman wrecks in the Mediterranean, wrecks in North American waters and seventeenth-century treasure wrecks off Cornwall in England. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellow.