Sir Peter Blake - An Amazing Life by Alan Sefton

$12.00 NZD

Category: Sailing | Reading Level: very good

Sir Blake was a sailor, captain, and legend. The late Sir Peter Blake was perhaps the greatest competitive yachtsman of all time, the man who seized the America's cup and won the Whitbread. In his later years he turned away from international competition and used the yacht Seamaster to draw attention to threats to the world's environment. It was in pursuit of this cause that in 2001 Blake was tragically murdered at the mouth of the Amazon while defending Seamaster from pirates. In this first ever biography, close friend and colleague Alan Sefton traces Blake's extraordinary life. From the small boy crazy about the sea to the rigours of ocean racing and the America's Cup triumphs, to the decision to devote his life to saving the world's oceans and to his sad but brave end on the Amazon. Blake lived life to the limit. An Amazing Life offers both gripping adventure and inspiration to sailors and non-sailors alike. ...Show more

Batavia's Graveyard - The true story of the mad heretic who led history's bloodiest mutiny by Mike Dash

$12.00 NZD

Category: Nautical | Reading Level: very good

When the Dutch East Indiaman Batavia struck an uncharted reef off the new continent of Australia on her maiden voyage in 1629, 332 men, women and children were on board. While some headed off in a lifeboat to seek help, 250 of the survivors ended up on a tiny coral island less than half a mile long. A b and of mutineers, whose motives were almost beyond comprehension, then started on a cold-blooded killing spree, leaving fewer than 80 people alive when the rescue boat arrived three months later. BATAVIA'S GRAVEYARD tells this strange story as a gripping narrative structured around three strong principal characters: Francisco Pelsaert, the cultivated but weak-willed captain; Jeronimus Cornelisz, a sinister apothecary with a terrifying personal philosophy influenced by Rosicrucianism who set himself up as the ruler of the island; and Wiebbe Hayes, the only survivor with the courage to fight Jeronimus¿s band. The background to these events, including the story of the Dutch East India Company, and the discovery of Australia, is richly drawn. ...Show more

Duperrey's Visit to New Zealand in 1824 by Andrew Sharp (ed.)

$35.00 NZD

Category: Maori | Reading Level: very good

A Voyage Round the World in the Years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV by George Anson

$40.00 NZD

Category: Nautical | Series: Oxford English Memoirs and Travels Ser. | Reading Level: very good

Steam on the Waitemata by W. W. Stewart

$25.00 NZD

Category: Shipping | Reading Level: very good

Clover's Folly - The Figurehead Collection of His Majesty's New Zealand Naval Base Devonport, Auckland by Peter Dennerlyy)

$10.00 NZD

Category: Naval | Reading Level: very good

Navigators and Naturalists - French Exploration of New Zealand and the Pacific 1769-1824 by Michael Lee

$40.00 NZD

Category: Nautical | Reading Level: near fine

As historian James Belich put it: `There is little doubt that Cook has been emphasised to the unfair exclusion of the massive French contribution to European knowledge of New Zealand.' This book seeks to redress this balance, drawing in the main on primary sources (both here and in France, and including primary research from original French documents never before translated into English) and scholarship from key researchers in this field. As well as fascinating descriptions of what the French saw when they travelled around New Zealand's coast, Lee focuses on the key characters of this age of French exploration (names such as de Surville, du Fresne, La Perouse, D'Entrecasteaux, Duperrey, Freycinet, D'Urville and Lesson), their relationships with Maori and the desire of France to complete with the British in the Pacific. ...Show more

Scurvy by Stephen R. Bown

$12.00 NZD

Category: Nautical | Reading Level: very good

In the days of the tall ships, one dreaded foe was responsible for more deaths at sea than piracy, shipwreck and all other illnesses combined. Cruelly culling sailors and stunting maritime enterprise from Vasco da Gama to Sir Francis Drake, this plague of the seas was scurvy. Countless mariners perished from the disease in agony; their early symptoms included bleeding gums, wobbly teeth and the opening of old wounds. A cure had eluded doctors and philosophers since the time of the ancient Greeks, but in the late eighteenth century the surgeon James Lind, the great sea captain James Cook and the physician Sir Gilbert Blane, undertook to crack the riddle of scurvy. Their timely discovery, just as Napoleon was mobilising for the conquest of Europe, solved the greatest medical mystery of the Age of Sail and irrevocably altered the course of world history. ...Show more

Fitzroy of the Beagle by H E L Mellersh

$25.00 NZD

Category: Nautical | Reading Level: good-very good

Voyages and Adventures of La Perouse from the fourteenth edition of the F. Valentin abridgment, Tours, 1875, translated from the French by Julius S. Gassner by F. Valentin; Julius S Gassner

$20.00 NZD

Category: Nautical

The Dalton Journal - Two Whaling Voyages to the South Seas 1823-1829 by Niel Gunson (Editor)

$16.00 NZD

Category: Nautical | Reading Level: good-very good

The Polynesian Journal of Captain Henry Byam Martin, R.N - In Command of H.M.S. Grampus-50 Guns at Hawaii and on Station in Tahiti and the Society Islands, August 1846 to August 1847 by Henry Byam Martin

$25.00 NZD

Category: Pacific | Reading Level: very good