Articles
Hit By Lightning!
The weather report that Friday night last August called for “thunder showers, ending by morning.” It also mentioned “possible lightning strikes.” Now I’ve always put lightning strikes in the category of shark attacks. You hear about them, but they rarely happen, especially to you. Suffice it to say that the lightning storm we experienced on
Empire of Blue Water
Wealth, Rogues and Natural Disasters The subtitle of this book is “Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe that Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign.” Author Stephan Talty skillfully combines these three themes in this informative, entertaining book. We are introduced to the pirate world of the Caribbean,
Monhegan’s venerable LAURA B marks 65th anniversary
Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail
In 1740 a British fleet under the command of Commodore George Anson sailed for the Pacific with instructions to attack a Spanish treasure galleon carrying silver from Acapulco to the Philippines. England and Spain had gone to war in 1739 over “trade rights” and capture of the treasure ship would strike at the heart of
Maine’s “Steamer” Stanley earned fame, infamy with the Red Sox
As the Red Sox begin the defense of their second World Championship in the last four years, let’s celebrate the opening of the baseball season with a profile of one of the more illustrious ball players from Maine, Bob Stanley. The reference library at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY lists 71 men
The Wreck Of The MEDUSA:The Most Famous Sea Disaster of the Nineteenth Century
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007 309 pages, $25.00 “Sir, you have made a shipwreck” On the morning of July 2, 1816, the French frigate Medusa, enroute to Senegal, hit a reef off the coast of Africa. The result was one of the great nautical disasters of the century; a 19th century version of the Titanic, without
A century ago, a Maine-built ship joined the Great White Fleet
The past few years have seen a profusion of books and articles commemorating the 100th anniversary of the circumnavigation of the globe by Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet. What was it that compelled the President to send 16 battleships on a 46,000-mile cruise around the world from 1907-1909, and how was Maine involved? The short
Curmudgeonly Kenneth Roberts helped generations know their past
Maine author Kenneth Roberts died 50 years ago this past July at the age of 71. As a boy, I read a number of his books, though I knew next to nothing about him as a person. I did know Roberts was a prolific writer of historical fiction and that I enjoyed the stories he
CochraneThe Real Master and Commander
Bloomsbury, 2007 Wolf of the Sea The subtitle of this book is revealing. In 1984 Patrick O’Brian wrote, “Some ten or eleven years ago an American publisher suggested that I should write a book about the Royal Navy of Nelson’s time. I was happy to agree, since both the period and the subject were congenial.
Perfect, Once Removed
Walker & Company, 176 p Hardcover $19.95 “Glory was mine” One has to be of a certain age to remember Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Maine author Phillip Hoose, who lives in Portland and still plays ball on Sundays, was nine years old at the time and the event transformed his