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IN THE WAKE OF THE BEAGLE. Science in the Southern Oceans from the Age of Darwin.
Edited By Iain McCalman and Nigel Erskine. Paperback, 250mm x 230mm, 192 pages, full colour and black and white illustrations and photos.
Strange as it may seem, the long wake of the tiny HMS Beagle stretches from the nineteenth century into the future of our globe. Charles Darwin spent only three months in Australia, but Australasia and the Pacific contributed to his evolutionary thinking in a variety of ways. One hundred and fifty years after the publication of On the Origin of Species, the internationally acclaimed authors of In the Wake of the Beagle provide new insights into the world of collecting, surveying and cross-cultural exchange in the antipodes in the age of Darwin. They explore the groundbreaking work of Darwin and his contemporaries Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace, shed light on their interaction with the region's indigenous voyagers, and take a very modern look at the naturalists' influence on today's cutting-edge scientific research, at a time when global warming has raised the stakes to an unprecedented level.
NZ$70.00 + Delivery.
JACQUES COUSTEAU - THE SEA KING. By Brad Matsen. Hardcover, 162mm x 242mm, 296 pages, black and white photos.
Jacques Cousteau opened up the undersea world as no one has done before or since. But not generally known is the fascinating and compelling individual behind the acclaimed television personality.
With the cooperation of many of Jacques Cousteau's collaborators, friends, and family, Brad Matsen gives us the first full picture of this remarkable life. Here is Cousteau working for the French resistance during World War II 9for which he received France's Croix de Guerre); developing and risking his life to test - the regulator that made scuba diving possible; running the world's largest scuba equipment manufacturing firm; becoming a legendary catalyst of the worldwide environmental movement' starring in The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and in hundreds of documentaries; and publishing more than fifty books. And here is the widowed Cousteau marrying his longtime mistress - forty years his junior and the mother of two of his children - kindling a bitter family feud that continues to this day.
Vividly conveying the people, the adventure, the science, and the lure of the sea that shaped Couteau's life, Matsen paints a luminous portrait of a man who profoundly changed the way we view, and treat, our planet.
NZ$60.00 + Delivery.
JAMES CRAIG SAILS AGAIN. By Moving Planet Production. DVD, running time 92 minutes.
In early 1972 a young Sydney-based maritime museum, in seach of a tall ship, located the derelict century-old rusting iron hull of the barque James Craig aground in a remote bay in southern Tasmania. Built in Sunderland, UK in 1874, James Craig had had a busy working life, shipping cargo to the four corners of the globe rounding Cape Horn 23 times. But as tramp steamers took over the commercial shipping routes the role of the majestic tall ships came to an end. James Craig was ignominiously retired as a coal hulk and was finally beached and abandoned in Recherche Bay. Most tall ships didn't survive, but James Craig did. For almost 30 years a small group of dedicated volunteers battled the difficulties of refloating the hull, towing it to Hobart, making it seaworthy for a tow to Sydney and then carefully and authentically restoring the ship to fully operational sailing condition. Today, as a proud member of the Sydney Heritage Fleet, the magnificent James Craig sails again, a tribute to the volunteers, supporters and donors who played such a vital part in an incredible, painstaking and meticulous restoration project. This film tells the story of that restoration.
NZ$35.00 + Delivery.
ALWAYS THE SOUND OF THE SEA. The daily lives of New Zealand's Lighthouse Keepers
By Helen Beaglehole. Paperback with flaps, 216mm x 240mm, 264 pages, black & white photographs.
Lighthouses have a mystique, a romance and an almost biblical significance about them. Elegant structures located on remote and exposed sites where the land is challenged by the sea, they beam light into the darkness and transform uncertainty into knowledge and safety. They are the subject of legends and yarns, shanties and poems, written and oral history around the world.
New Zealand's lighthouses - their location, design, construction, operation and demanning - have been well documented in Helen Beaglehole's comprehensive history Lighting the Coast (2006). But the lives and work of the men and women behind the lights over the last 150 years deserves closer study. Why did they chosse the life? What did the job entail from day to day and year to year? How did it change over the decades? How did they feel about their work? What were their fears, frustrations and rewards?
In Always the Sound of the Sea Helen Beaglehole again challenges the myths and the romance as she looks for answers to these questions in the words of the keepers themselves. Drawing on a rich and intriguing mix of letters, diary extracts, official correspondence and interviews - from an 1872 diary to interviewswith the lastof the lighthouse keepers, she brings together first-hand acciounts of the life and work of these resourceful New Zealandres. Illustrated with family snapshots and other photographs, this book is both a sequel and a companion to her highly praised Lighting the Coast.
See also Guardians of the Light DVD for some great footage and the lighthouse keeper's and their family's own words.
NZ$40.00 + Delivery.
NATIONAL GEOPGRAPHIC SOCIETY EXPLORATION EXPERIENCE.
By Beau Riffenbach. Hardback in Box, 310mm x 279mm, 80 pages, black & white photographs and illustrations and more than 30 rare and newly researched removable facsimile documents.
Filled with names that have made and changed the course of history, the The National Geographic Society Exploration Experience takes you on a voyage of discovery. From the time of Erik the Red through the journeys of Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, the Spanish conquistadores as well as French and Portugese pioneers to the heroic attempts of such people as Livingstone, Amundsen and Scott, this beautifully illustrated book journeys around the world with explorers who have dedicated andin some cases sacrificed thier lives to expand our knowledge of the globe.
This fabulous box contains an 80 page book with more than 200 illustrations and more than 30 rare and newly researched removable facsimile documents of historic importance, including:
Was NZ$105.00 + Delivery.
Now NZ$60.00 + Delivery.
EDDYSTONE - THE FINGER OF LIGHT.
By Mike Palmer. Paperback, 210mm x 298mm, 142 pages, black & white photographs and illustrations.
This is the definitive history of the world's most definitive lighthouse. Fourteen miles off the port of Plymouth, lies what the captain of the Mayflower described as 'this wicked reef of twenty-three rust-red granite rocks.... great ragged stones around which the sea continuously eddies, a great danger to all ships hereabouts'. Before the seventeenth century, no one had considered it possible to put a warning light in such an exposed and dangerous position, but in 1698, Henry Winstanly completed the first lighthouse on the Eddystone rocks. It was a wooden structure, and after one of the most violent storms in history, in november 1703, no trace of it remained.
A second wooden lighthouse built by John Rudyerd, was in turn succeeded, later in the eighteenth century, by John Smeaton's masterpiece of engineering in stone.
This saw service for over 120 years, until a new tower, mcuh larger than anything previously built there, was erected alongside by james Douglass in 1881.
This book fully illustrated and informed by original sources, tells the astonishing stories of Eddystone - tales of courage, genius, fraud and horror. Researched over ten years, Eddystone - The Finger of Light was first published in 1998 to mark the 300th anniversary of Winstanley's lighthouse. This is the new and revised edition published in 2005.
Was NZ$55.00 + Delivery.
Now NZ$20.00 + Delivery.
THE MAN WHO CHALLENGED AMERICA - THE LIFE AND OBSESSION OF SIR THOMAS LIPTON.By Laurence Brady. Hardback, 163mm x 240mm, 240 pages, monochrome photos.
Glasgow-born Thomas Lipton was one of the world's first global entrepreneurs. His showmanship, business flair and customer-driven focus created a chain of grocery stores and an international tea business that made his fortune.
Outside the world of work, Lipton was obsessed with sailing, and though not a yachtsman himself, he mounted five challenges between 1899 and 1930 through the Roayl Ulster Yacht Club for the greatest prize in yachting - the America's Cup. This brought him extraordinary worldwide fame and affection, and his name became a byword for sportsmanship, diplomacy, competitiveness and perseverence. What's more, Lipton's astute association of business with a sport of international dimension established a trend that has become an accepted part of life today.
Until now, no biography of Sir Thomas Lipton has brought together these strands. The Man Who Challenged America is a lively, entertaining and hugely informative biography which reassesses and re-evaluates the life of this remarkable man whose challenges to win the America's Cup make one of the most moving and extraordinary stories in sporting history.
NZ$55.00 + Delivery.
LIGHTING THE COAST.By Helen Beaglehole. Hardback, 207mm x 276mm, 353 pages, monochrome photos.
To New Zealand, a small colony in the vastness of the South Pacific, shipping was a lifeline to the rest of the world - yet a lifeline too often placed in peril by the ferocity of the weather and a long, hazardous coastline.
Lighting the Coast is the first comprehensive history of New Zealand's system of 'well-placed and effective" lighthouses that were essential for 'the great maritime future' its government envisaged. This authoritative and highly readable book reveals the fascinating story of the siting, design, construction, operation and eventual demanning of those nineteenth- and early twentieth-century monuments of engineering. It reveals much of the lives of the lighthouse keepers - practical, independent men who took their families to live in remote parts of New Zealand - and raises critical questions about the future of the historic structures.
This handsome tribute to an enthralling aspect of New Zealand's history features more than 280 black-and-white and colour illustrations, including early photographs, painting, diagrams, maps and charts.
NZ$55.00 + Delivery.
LOST EXPLORERS.By Ed Wright. Softback, 185mm x 225mm, 300 pages, colour and black and white illustrations.
Lost and found in history – adventurers who disappeared off the face of the Earth.
The characters and stories revealed in the pages of Lost Explorers are by definition tragic and mysterious, as much as they are thrilling and inspiring. The adventures and misadventures of these lost explorers span the centuries and the globe; many changed the course of history, and altered the known shape of the world. Lost Explorers is an encyclopaedia of 80 adventurers who gave their lives for the cause of discovery.
NZ$50.00 + Delivery.
THE PIRATE'S POCKETBOOK.By Stuart Robinson (Editor). Hardback, 130mm x 200mm, 192 pages, colour and black and white drawings.
What was it like to be a pirate in the Golden Age of piracy?
This pocket-book builds up an authentic picture of the lives and deaths of the most infamous pirates and privateers, as well as illuminating the brutal comradeship of pirate crew, and their devil-may-care attitude to their own mortality. The mythology of pirate ships, flags and rum punch, are all examined in special box-outs in order to get to the heart of the pirates’ world.
NZ$30.00 + Delivery.
SHIP'S CATS in War and Peace.By Val Lewis. Hardback, 160mm x 240mm, 20 pages, black and white photosgraphs.
At heart, all domesticated cats are really ships’ cats. These are their stories, in war and peace, discovery and disaster, fact and fable, poetry and ballad.
NZ$60.00 + Delivery.
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