Customer Reviews

Lost Voyages: Two Centuries of Shipwrecks in the Approaches to New York

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Although there are now many books extant on shipwrecks and shipwreck lore this work stands out head and shoulders above the rest. It's area of provenence is that of the Approaches to New York, an area that also includes a huge graveyard of ships long known to sailors as the New York Bight. This area of the coast is home to many a maritime disaster running the gamut from vessels lost to storm and tempest, to those lost in collisions and to other misfortune, and also the many victims of the U-Boat campaigns of WWI and WWII. Tugboats, tankers, freighters, warships and submarines, they are all here to the delight of many a shipwreck diver and reader.

Many fantastic and historic wrecks, such as the famous Grand Dame of the Sea the Andrea Doria and the WWI Battlecruiser San Diego are discussed in detail here.

Author Bradley Sheard's outstanding effort spans two centuries of maritime history as it thoroughly and entertainingly documents the fate of numerous shipwrecks. The book contains a beautifully written textual history supported by outstanding photographs taken by the author along with a good mix of well researched archival material. There are also many carefully and accurately done drawings illustrating the wrecks themselves as they now rest on the sea floor.

The author has obviously gone the extra mile to combine exhaustive research with first hand diving experience to provide the reader with a type of description that brings these shipwrecks to life with many amazing stories of ships and their people that is high drama as only as disaster at sea can be. Bradley Sheard was a member of the legendary Atlantic Wreck Divers and is also one of wreck diving's most skillful and articulate practitioners.

I close by saying that I have dived many of these shipwrecks and the book enriches my own memories wonderfully and I am compelled to say to Mr. Sheard, in the terms of an East Coast Waterman, well done and "Finest Kind!"

The Wreck Hunters: Dive to the Wreck of the USS Bass

I think this has to be one of the best shipwreck books I have ever read. Not only does it give detailed accounts of the events leafing up to and including the sinkings, it's packed full of maps, photos, evn drawings of the present state of the wrecks. I think this is probably a must-read.

"Two centuries of Shipwrecks in the Approaches to New York" it says on the cover - and that just about says it all. They include HMS Culloden - lost off Long Island in 1781 and the USS San Diego - a four-funnelled armoured cruiser and the only major US Warship lost during WW1. There are tankers and freighters and even one or two U-Boats that sank some of them. There are Cruise Liners from the earliest days of passenger travel, right up to the Andrea Doria - still so sleek and beautiful, it really is hard to believe she was lost in 1956 - almost 50 years ago already.

Lost Voyages is paperback measuring approx. 11½ in x 8½ and filled with over 200 pages of detailed information, historic photographs, underwater photographs, sketches, maps and sectional drawings. Expertly crafted, the book is laid out from the earliest days of America - as a fledgling nation, at Sea right up to the present. With chapters dedicated to; Wooden Warships, Sailing Merchant Ships, the Ascendancy of the Steamship, Ships that ran Aground, the 1914-1918 War, Between the Wars, WW2 and the Era of Modern Navigation, this is a fascinating voyage through the Shipwrecks of time in this one small corner of the world.

The layout, and combination of historic and up-to-date information have been engineered in such a way as to provide the reader with a fascinating insight into the maritime casualties off one major American seaport.

From a Scuba Diver's perspective, these shipwrecks are easily "New York's finest" making this an essential addition to any bookshelf. Once read by any diver - even if you don't live in New York, you just know you will "have" to dive some of these wrecks - someday...

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