The Circumnavigators

by Derek Wilson

Book Overview

Packed with astonishing exploits and peopled with brave, daring, and sometimes foolhardy men and women from many nations, this entertaining and enlightening history of circumnavigation offers a stirring saga of quest and discovery, of adventure and achievement. Illustrated with pictures, charts, and diagrams, its narrative unfolds in dramatic detail the story that began on April 27, 1521, when the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan was speared...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786711507
• ISBN13: 9780786711505
• Release Date: June 2003
• Publisher: Running Press Book Publishers
• Length: 331 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

intrepid sailors

this book is a compilation of men and sailing ships that circumnavigated our globe from very early times to the 6os, they are wonderful stories of courage and skill in both large and small vessels

Good General Survey

This book, as promised, does indeed deal with a lot of the people that sailed around the globe in voyages historic or otherwise. You know, yorr Magellan and Drake and Cook types. (Although Magellan only halfway counts, because he got himself killed in the Philippines when picking a fight with the locals, so Elcano actually brought the ship back to Spain. Also Cook met a similar fate a coupla centuries later, but only on his third voyage of exploration.)Mostly people died in vast numbers on these expeditions, due to drowning, battles, starvation, mutiny, captivity, or disease. (Especially scurvy, which regularly carried away a heck of a lot of sailors.) But some would survive and come back fabulously wealthy. So you had a lot of English and French and Spanish and Portugese and Dutch crews wandering around the Pacific. And of course, later the Americans joined in.Some of these voyages were for exploration, research, and national prestige. Some were mere piracy. Some were mercantile. A few of the later ones were just for uber-rich folks to go poncing about in luxury in search of an amusing adventure. In more recent times, it has been about Man's Eternal Battle Against Nature And Himself, wherein some driven or eccentric folks undertake these voyages for fame, glory, or to see what they are made of. (These are the people that do the solo journeys to set new speed records and stuff.)As a general survey of oceanic exploration, this is quite good, although it suffers from some idiosyncratic punctuation (to American eyes, anyway--this was written by some UK guy) and also relies too much in the early going with pointless excerpts from the journals of modern-era sailors. So you'll be reading about Magellan stumbling across the empty and uncharted reaches of the Pacific, then suddenly you're treated to the musings of somebody who sailed to Australia in a modern racing yacht in 1975 or something. I found that to be annoying and odd.Other than those quibbles, though, it's a pretty entertaining book and it does mention the U.S. Exploring Expedition (which started off on an ominous note when every single current naval captain of the time declined the command, so that it sailed under the "leadership" of a desk lieutenant who wasted no time in morphing into Captain Queeg), which itself is the subject of another book wtat just came out about a month ago. Cool.

history come alive!

RebeccasReads recommends this for everyone who loves the telling of history -- of the smell & taste of those sea voyages -- of the politics & religions of the time, & the whys & wherefores of those sailors setting sail; what happened to them & what they found on the other side of the horizon.Clear up to the great Clipper Ships, the first solo-circumnavigator & stories of our modern adventurers, this is a "loverly" read, recreating the stories of those sailors who first kept going until they came home, as well as those who never made it back.

The History of Circumnavigation of teh Earth

This is a book of the history of the first times the Earth has been circumnavigated Staring from Sailing ships , ending with space craft . This was written from a eye witness account / newpaper outlook . A lot of research and human interest stories are included . This is a MUST READ for any Sailor .