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PIRACY TODAY - Fighting Villainy on the High Seas.By John Payne. 262 pages, 160mm x 240mm, black and white photos.
In this eye-opening account, respected author and seaman John Payne lifts the veil on modern piracy, detailing hundreds of very real and frightening accounts up until now. The recent hijacking of the Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates merely brought worldwide attention to an issue that has been simmering for years.
In safe havens like Somalia and the Malacca Straits, pirates are a menace to ships of any type. What is being done about them, and what more can be done? What precautions can you take with your own yacht? Payne brings decades of experience to bear on this threat to every sailor.
NZ$60.00 + Delivery
SAILING TO SUCCESS. The Union Company Cadet schemeBy Rae McGregor. Hardback, 198mm X 267mm, 176 pages, Black & White and full colour photographs and illustrations.
Although the Union Steam Ship Company had briefly offered young New Zealanders on-the-job sea training earlier in the century, its famous officer cadet training scheme began in 1952 and ran until 1986. During that time over 300 young men and women passed through the scheme.
It was a time when New Zealand-flagged ships travelled the globe and when life at sea offered adventure and a ticket to a job for life. Many former cadets are now masters or officers of today's ships, others serve as harbour masters or pilots or shipping company managers. As one former trainee remarked, 'all who signed indentures with the Union Company were people of good calibre - after all, none have appeared in the newspapers as rapists or axe murderers, but all seem to have become successful, not necessarily financially, but in the best way - as good people'.
In a lively text based on extensive interviews with former cadets, and in over 100 photographs, Rae Mcregor explores an era when the Union Company and its people were quite literally Sailing to Success.
NZ$60.00 + Delivery
WHITE SHIPS 1927-1978. A Tribute to Matson's Luxury LinersBy Duncan O'Brien. Hardback, 320mm X 255mm, 284 pages, Black & White and full colour photographs and illustrations.
In the early 1900s, the islands of Hawaii and the South Pacific were sparsely populated and difficult to reach for visitors from North America. Most merchant ships were busy transporting sugar, pineapples and other goods, with only a few vessels equipped to carry passengers. At the same time, the United States was eager to expand its economic and political interests across the Pacific. The vast region offered strategic advantages, abundant natural resources and the potential to become a tourist destination.
A wave of change arrived on the Pacific in 1927, when the S.S. Malolo, Matson Navigation's magnificent new luxury liner, made her maiden voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu. Completing the 2,078-mile crossing in just four and a half days, the American-flagged Malolo was the biggest, fastest and most beautiful ship ever seen on the Pacific. When she sailed past Waikiki for the first time to a tumultuous welcome at the Aloha Tower, a new era was born.
Other spectacular white ships soon followed. The Monterey, Mariposa, Lurline joined the Malolo (later Matsonia) and became legendary around the Pacific. Two smaller liners, also named Monterey and Mariposa, were added to the Matson fleet in the 1950s.
For five decades, these ships brought the "Grand Manner" of Matson to Hawaii, Fiji, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Samoa and other exotic isles. Their influence in the Pacific, from San Francisco to Sydney, can still be felt to this day.
Flying the stars and stripes, the white ships were recognized as flagships of America's passenger shipbuilding industry, and its worldwide reputation for providing first-class ocean liner service. The United States' active involvement in these industries effectively came to an end when the Monterey and Mariposa sailed for the last time in 1978.
Until now, the enduring influence of the white ships, including their heroic service as troop transports in World War II, has never been fully documented.
The White Ships is a tribute to fifty years of service provided by the ships of the Matson Line, so dearly remembered for their Aloha spirit, the thrills of Boat Day, and endless, sunny days at sea.
NZ$195.00 + Delivery
BOX BOATS.By Brian J. Cudahy. Paperback, 152mm X 228mm, 338 pages, Black & White photographs.
Fifty years ago - on April 26, 1956 - the freighter Ideal X steamed from Berth 26 in port Newark, New Jersey. Flying the flag of the Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company, she set out for Houston with an unusual cargo: 58 trailer trucks lashed to her top deck.
But they weren't really trucks - rather, they were steel containers removed from their running gear, waiting to be lifted onto empty truck beds when she reached Texas. Ideal X docked safely, and a revolution was launched - not only in shipping, but in the way the world trades. Today, the more than 200 million containers shipped every year are the lifeblood of the new global economy. They sit stacked neatly on thousands of "box boats" that grow more massive every year.
In this fascinating book, transportation expert Brian Cudahy provides a vivid, fast-paced account of the container-ship revolution - from the maiden voyage of the Ideal X to the entrepreneurial vision and technological breakthroughs that make it possible to ship more goods more cheaply than ever before.
Cudahy tells this complex story easily, starting with Malcom McLean, Pan-Atlantic's owner who, tired of waiting to load and unload goods into traditional open holds, first thought about loading the trucks themselves. His line grew into the container giant Sea-Land services, and Cudahy brilliantly charts its dramatic evolution into Maersk Line, the largest container line in the world. Along the way, he provides a concise, colorful history of world shipping - from freighter types to the fortunes of steamship lines - and explores the spectacular growth of global trade fueled by the mammoth ships and new seaborne lifelines connecting Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Masterful maritime history, Box Boats shows how fleets of these ungainly ships make the modern world economy possible - with both positive and negative effects. And it's also a wistful tale of its home port, New York, where old freighter piers lie silent while 40-foot steel boxes of toys and televisions come ashore by the thousands, across the bay in New Jersey.
NZ$55.00 + Delivery
NEW ZEALAND MARITIME IMAGES - THE GOLDEN YEARS.By Emmanuel Makarios. Hardback, 282mm X 217mm, 257 pages, Full colour photographs.
This book contains some 300 colour images of New Zealand maritime scenes from the collection of the Museum of Wellington City and Sea taken between the 1950s and early 1970s. This was the era when conventional cargo ships plied the waters, and people headed overseas still boarded passenger liners instead of aircraft. Included are large ocean going ships and smaller coastal traders, ferries, service vessels, ports large and small, and wharf scenes redolent with the atmosphere of the time before containerisation changed everything.
Many of the ships are British, as can be expected in the period when over 40 percent of New Zealand's foreign trade was with the 'old country', but ships from several other countries are represented also.
The author was a merchant seaman for 12 years before becoming the Exhibitions Officer at the Wellington Maritime Museum and more recently Manager of the Cable Car Museum, and has written the three volume history of New Zealand fishing vessels 'Nets Lines and Pots', as well as an account of the tragic sinking of the Lyttelton to Wellington ferry Wahine in 1968.
NZ$70.00 + Delivery
SALVAGE - A PERSONAL ODYSSEY.By Captain Ian Tew. Paperback, 202mm X 259mm, 291 pages, Full colour photographs and maps as well as black & white line drawings.
'No Cure, No Pay' - those are the terms under which a salvor operates, and in doing so he takes on an onerous responsibility. If he is defeated by the elemants he is not paid. He receives nothing, however much money, effort, sweat and tears he has put in. Salvage is not a business for the faint-hearted.
Ian Tew joined Selco Salvage of Singapore in 1974, and spent over a decade on the front line. Already an experienced master mariner he learnt the salvage trade in the busy waters of the Far East before rising to command some of the world's largest supertugs, eventually becoming a roving salvage master. In his odyssey he roamed the world, from the coast of Cornwall to the Southern Ocean, from the Gulf of Suez to the dangerous reefs of the South China Sea.
This is a vivid account of those ten tough years - successes, failures, tows and rescues - a barge adrift in a hurricane in the English Channel - a freighter aground on a reef hundreds of miles from land with a tropical storm approaching - a trawler battered by the the surf on a coral reef, its bottom ripped out - a tanker hit by a missile in the Gulf during the "Tanker War' of the 1980s.
The tugs themselves play a big part in the story, as do the crews and captains the author worked with. This gripping account of drama at sea is a tribute to seamanship, courage and resourcefulness of the salvor, and an insight into the technical, commercial and human issues behind the headlines.
NZ$75.00 + Delivery
OCEAN TITANS - JOURNEYS IN SEARCH OF THE SOUL OF A SHIP.By Daniel Sekulich. Hardcover, 160mm X 235mm, 242 pages, black & white photographs.
In this book author Daniel Sekulich takes us on a fascinating journey as he delves into the world of merchant shipping. We travel to massive shipyards in Korea, across the North Atlantic in a ferocious gale, and into the boardroom of a wealthy ship owner in Monaco. Along the way, we learn how a captain masters his craft, why a deckhand spends nine months at sea, and how a ship is broken up on the shores of India. Through it all, Ocean Titans seeks to understand the ageless appeal of ships and the sea and attempts to answer the question: Does a ship have a soul?
Daniel Sekulich, a documentary filmmaker, has a trained eye for detail, and his unsurpassed skills of observation are in full bloom. Take, for example, his description of the scrap yards on the sandy shores of the Bay of Khambhat in India:
To glimpse the ghosts who once inhabited these ocean titans, all you have to do is follow that offshore breeze as it swirls around, over and into the ship, gliding through empty corridors and darkened cabins. The winds moan and murmur as they explore the vessel, at times pausing until the air becomes heavy with the smell of sweat, steel, and heat. Then they resume their airborne journey through the leviathan until the gusts grow bored and exit into the brilliant sunshine of northwestern India.
The oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers of the earth are teeming with more than forty-six thousand merchant vessels, Daniel Sekulich points out. As many as two million people make their livelihood from seafaring. Merchant shipping is a multi-billion-dollar, multinational endeavour that carries over 90 percent of global trade: crude oil, cooking oil, beer, wine, vodka, wheat, fresh fruit, vegetables, livestock, medicine, computers, furniture, automobiles, and much more. In the past thirty years this most traditional of occupations has changed dramatically. Why? And how?
Ocean Titans is a masterfully written investigation of the magnetism and mystery of the sea and those who are drawn to it.
NZ$65.00 + Delivery
WE WERE DIFFERENT - THE TASMAN EXPRESS LINE HISTORY.By Gavin McLean. Hardcover, 262mm X 200mm, 168 pages, colour photographs.
Forget windjammers or steamships. Tasman Express Line was a container and computer age baby. Owned by three ship agencies - McKay Shipping, Geo.H.Scales and Hetherington Kingsbury and freight forwarder Refrigerated Freight Lines, Tasman Express brought new service standards to the Tasman, then one of the world's costliest sealanes.
Run on the smell of an oily rag by a young, energetic staff, and by hands-on directors, Tasman Express quickly established itself as the innovator. It invited ships' officers to attend board meetings and its advertising broke all the established rules. In this book, Gavin McLean traces the highs and lows of a modern shipping company that took on the big boys.
NZ$50.00 + Delivery
UNION FLEET.By Ian Farquhar. Hardcover, 192mm X 266mm, 269 pages, monochrome photographs.
In 1875 James Mills and a group of Dunedin merchants founded a shipping line that would last 125 years. Backed by Scottish and English capital and technical knowhow, the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand Limited quickly established itself as Australasia's pre-eminent shipping line. By 1890 it dominated the New Zealand coastal, the Trans Tasman and the Tasmania runs and traded also to India, the Pacific Islands and to North America.
Since 1968 Union Fleet has been the authoritative guide to this company's fascinating fleet. For this greatly enlarged third edition, maritime historian Ian Farquhar has updated entries and assembled hundreds of illustrations of the ships owned by the company, together with a generous selection of ships chartered or managed by it. Now in one publication can be found famous liners such as the Rotomahana and the legendary Awatea as well as the hundreds of other liners, ferries, freighters and specialist ships that once dominated the Australasian shipping scene.
NZ$75.00 + Delivery
THE TYSER LEGACY.By Ian Farquhar. Hardcover, 192mm X 266mm, 376 pages, monochrome photographs.
For over 60 years the Port Line's immaculately maintained ships provided a vital link between the United Kingdom and her principle dominions. At times their wartime duties took them further afield, with one ship, the Port Chalmers of 1933, winning lasting fame in the Malta Convoys.
Until now the company has been overshadowed by the stories of its famous ships. The Tyser Legacy rectifies this. Ian Farquhar draws on a lifetime's experience in the shipping industry, and meticulous research in both hemispheres, to fully explore the inner workings of the company. As the title suggests, the 1913 amalgamation of the Tyser, Milburn, Corry and Royden interests to form the Commonwealth and Dominion Line (later Port Line) was not a simple merger of equals: Tyser and Company made the running.
This book provides a fascinating look at the politics of the Conference system and the unhappy fate of the Cunard group which the Port Line joined in 1916. The book also details the histories of ACT(A) - Associated Container Transportation (Aust) Ltd, The Crusader Shipping Company, the Montreal Australia New Zealand Line Ltd (MANZ) and other Port Line associated companies.
With more than 240 black and white and colour photographs, comprehensive fleet lists and information on ship names and company figures, The Tyser Legacy is the definitive history of a great British Shipping Line.
NZ$85.00 + Delivery
CANTERBURY COASTERS.By Gavin McLean. Hardcover, 192mm X 266mm, 96 pages, monochrome photographs.
For more than 60 years the little ships of the Canterbury Steam Shipping Company were a familiar sight in New Zealand ports. The Black Funnel Fleet provided a way of life for many yet few people knew about the hidden connections between Canterbury and big business or guessed what went on behind the scenes. In this beautifully-illustrated book, using previously unavailable files, maritime historian Gavin McLean delves into the archives to produce one of the most fascinating and unconventional shipping company histories ever written.
NZ$35.00 + Delivery
THE SOUTHERN OCTOPUS.By Gavin McLean. Hardcover, 186mm X 268mm, 239 pages, monochrome photographs.
Opinion was always divided. Its supporters called the Union Steam Ship Company the largest shipping company south of the line while its many enemies called it "The Southern Octopus". Formed at Dunedin in 1875 by James Mills, an ambitious young clerk with an eye for the main chance, the Union Company became New Zealand's first multi-national.
Backed by British capital and aided by skilful management, ruthless tactics and sheer good luck, the Union Company quickly monopolised the country's fuel and transport industries. It played a key role in smashing trade union power in the 1890 and 1913 strikes and its leaders usually had the ear of government. By 1914 its tentacles stretched right around the globe.
Yet for all its easy antipodean supremacy, its leaders remained conscious of their geographical isolation and the need to build up alliances. In 1917 their failure of nerve led to their absorption into a British combine and an impotence that is still having its repercussions 80 years later.
NZ$45.00 + Delivery
IN PERIL.By Skip Strong and Twain Braden. Paperback, 153mm X 229mm, 250 pages.
When Skip Strong, a thirty-two-year-old captain of the 688-foot oil tanker Cherry Valley received the call, all he knew was that an oceangoing tug with five men aboard was in distress off Florida's east coast. Caught in an unusually powerful storm, the tug's engines failed, and as the winds gusted to more than sixty miles per hour and the sea whipped into a frenzy, the tug - and the barge it was pulling - were in danger of being swept ashore.
Captain Strong also knew that he would follow the age-old tradition of sea rescue. Coming to the aid of the crew, the tug and its cargo, he would have to maneuver his ship - laden with ten million gallons of oil - in extremely hazardous conditions. One mistake and Strong would be responsible for an ecological disaster on Florida's beaches equal to that of the Exxon Valdez.
What Captain Strong didn't know was that the tug was carrying a 150-foot aluminium fuel cell worth upwards of $50 million. And that in the instant he decided to rescue the tug and its crew, he was opening the door on a dramatic and tense legal struggle that would pit him against the United States government for salvage rights.
In Peril is a taut, well-placed, and riveting drama wrapped around a seagoing world few people have the opportunity to glimpse.
Skip Strong was thirty-two when he started sailing as captain of the Cherry Valley. He is now a ship pilot on Penobscot Bay.
Twain Braden has worked as a navigation instructor and captain aboard traditionally rigged sailing vessels from Maine to the Caribbean. He now attends lawschool in Charleston, South Carolina.
NZ$40.00 + Delivery
COAST TO COAST. The Great Australian Coastal LinersBy Peter Plowman. Paperback, 212mm X 281mm, 196 pages, black & white photographs.
There was a time when the only way to travel between the major cities located around the coast of Australia was by ship. From the earliest days of European settlement up to the middle of the twentieth century, ships were the backbone of Australian trade. Up to the end of the nineteenth century, these ships were primarily intended to transport cargo, with scant attention being paid to the requirements and comfort of passengers. With Federation in 1901 came the development of a new type of coastal ship, intended to transport passengers in comfort, with cargo of secondary importance.
During the first ten years of the twentieth century the size of coastal passenger vessels increased at a steady rate, along with improvements in their passenger accomodation. The twelve-month period from September 1912 to September 1913 would see no less than six large liners built for the major Australian coastal trades.
Unfortunately, within a year of the last new liner entering service, World War I brought major changes to the coastal trade. Eventually all of the new liners, plus most of the older ones, were taken over for military duty in foreign waters, and the coastal trade virtually ground to a halt. Of the six large liners built just before the war, only two, Canberra and Katoomba, returned permanently to the trade, which languished through the 1920s.
Things changed in 1929, when two large motorships were built, Manunda for the Adelaide Steamship Company, and Westralia for Huddart Parker. Larger and faster than any previous coastal liner, they completely outclassed the competition and became very popular.
From 1936 to 1939 Australians enjoyed the best coastal service ever, but then war raised its ugly presence again, and for a second time the ships found themselves taken over for military duty. Once again the coastal trade gradually ground to a halt, never to fully recover.
When all the ships built in the ten years before the war were back in coastal service, the trade was facing intensive competition from airlines, which were establishing new routes and providing cheaper fares as well as much quicker travel times.
In 1961 the last two coastal liners, Kanimbla and Manoora, were sold to foreign owners and the coastal trade as it had been known for many years came to an end.
NZ$40.00 + Delivery
WRECK, RESCUE & SALVAGE.By Dick Jolly. Paperback, 170mm x 240mm, 154 pages, monochrome and colour photos.
Fascinated by the world of commercial deep-sea tugs and salvage, Dick Jolly trained as an engineer before joining the Australian National Line as a cadet. Relocating to Singapore and with a Foreign Going tugmaster's qualification under his belt, he went on to travel the oceans of the world, hauling derelict ships, dredgers, floating cranes and all manners of other craft.
For four years he left the sea, trying to earn a living as an opal-miner in the Australian Outback where the vast majority of miners go bankrupt! It was an advert for the post of tugmaster in the Port of Eden which brought him to his sense, and he returned to the world of salvage.
Captain Jolly relates many fascinating stories from the hard-bitten world of commercial salvage: dragging blazing ships off rocky shorelines, rescuing crews from the middle of the ocean and avoiding hostile natives. On one occasion, he had to drive through the jungle at break-neck speed to avoid being taken hostage! These and many other gripping adventures are recounted in this exciting and humorous story, which is complemented by many stunning colour and black & white photographs.
A rousing, true-life story which will appeal to all those interested in maritime stories and autobiographies; the international towage and salvage fraternity, and anyone looking for a good read.
NZ$65.00 + Delivery
HUDDART PARKER – A Famous Australasian Shipping Company, 1876-1961By W.A.Laxon, completed by H.W.Dick, I.J.Farquhar and T.S.Stevens. Softback, 175mm x 250mm, 235 pages, black and white photographs.
Huddart Parker was not only a famous Australian interstate shipping company, but also the only one to maintain a passenger line to New Zealand. Its coastal liners Westralia and Zealandia, trans-Tasman liners Ulimaroa and Wanganella, and Bass Strait ferries Nairana and Taroona were all household names.
This book is the first to record the history of the company from the arrival of its founders during the gold rush of the 1850’s through the establishment of the company in 1876 to its takeover and withdrawal from shipping in 1961. It includes a detailed fleet list and over 130 illustrations.
Author Bill Laxon was one of the founders of the Auckland Maritime Society, and at the time of his death in 2004 was Deputy Chairman of the Board of the National Maritime Museum. Following a suggestion from the Auckland Maritime Society, the National Maritime Museum named its library the Bill Laxon Maritime Library, which was officially opened in 2005. Since then the Bill Laxon Maritime Library Foundation has been established to provide on-going funding support for the library, which now has over 6,000 books and serials.
NZ$50.00 + Delivery.
THE WORLD IS MY OCEAN.By John C Briggs, Paperback, 145mm x 208mm, 206 pages, black and white photographs.
This true story of a young boy, born just prior to WWII, follows him from his dreams and yearnings of the sea to his gaining command at a very young age.
His father comes home from the war and then the 7-year-old boy and his mother travel to Australia on an old coal burning tramp ship where the boy's father is Master. His memories of this three month trip buttress his passion to go to sea.
The lad goes to sea eventually when he is 16 years old and he joins a British training ship in Sydney Australia.
The story then covers his three and a half years on the training ship. The very fast growing up and maturing that was part of the life, losing his virginity in a back alley in Genoa, forays ashore in the Middle East and Africa, visits to jungle ports many miles up river in Africa to barren desert ports in the Red Sea, the discipline and training regime on board, qualifying as a fully fledged seaman and the general excitement and escapades of a lad growing up at sea.
Then come the young officer years from five star passenger ship to cargo liners in the largest shipping company then flying the red ensign. There are many adventures along the way including piloting an Iranian passenger aircraft in the Persian Gulf while under the influence of alcohol, liaisons with young lady passengers, being harassed by the Red Guard in Shanghai and feasting at a Persian Emirates Sheik's Palace.
He joins a Hong Kong tramp company as Chief Officer and spends three years trading from the South China Seas to Cuba, the United States, the Middle East and beyond. Running cargo up the Vietnam coast to Hainan Island for the Chinese at the height of the Vietnam War, loading logs in Borneo and coal in Siberia, taking steel from Korea and Japan to the United States and returning with grain. He falls in love with a Japanese beauty who starts to dominate his thoughts.
Promoted to Master and given his own ship at the age of 28 he labours to fulfill his responsibilities. He undertakes his own pilotage in the Japanese Inland Sea and ports, comes under fire from Mainland China when departing Hong Kong, suffers a mutiny in the Great Australian Bight, attacked and boarded by pirates when arriving Singapore, jailed in Indonesia, passed through the eye of a typhoon in the Philippines, grounded when departing Bangkok and married his Japanese sweetheart and took her with him for his last few adventures at sea.
The book is made even more interesting by the inclusion of over 100 black and white photos bringing all the adventures to life.
NZ$40.00 + Delivery.
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