A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks

AN ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF 2024 'Masterful and entrancing - this is big history at its best.' Professor Alice Roberts, author of Ancestors 'A real-life Indiana Jones takes readers on a dive through these underwater museums, revealing the sunken secrets of the past' The Times From a Bronze Age ship built during the age of Queen Nefertiti and filled with ancient treasures, a Viking warship made for King Cnut himself, Henry VIII's spectacular Mary Rose and the golden age of the Tudor court, to the exploration of the Arctic, the tragic story of HMS Terror and tales of bravery and endurance aboard HMS Gairsoppa in World War Two, these are the stories of some of the greatest underwater discoveries of all time. A rich and exciting narrative, this is not just the story of those ships and the people who sailed on them, the cargo and treasure they carried and their tragic fate. This is also the story of the spread of people, religion and ideas around the world, a story of colonialism and migration which continues today. Drawing on decades of experience excavating shipwrecks around the world, renowned maritime archaeologist David Gibbins reveals the riches beneath the waves and shows us how the treasures found there can be a porthole to the past to tell a new story about the world and its underwater secrets.

David Gibbins is one of the world's foremost maritime archaeologists and a Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author. His twelve novels so far have sold over two million copies and are published in thirty languages. He has a BA in Ancient Mediterranean Studies from the University of Bristol and a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Research Scholar of Corpus Christi College and a postdoctoral fellow. He has investigated numerous shipwrecks ranging in date from early prehistory to modern times. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellow.