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The shipwrecks featured in the book represent trade, passenger transportation, slavery, war, and exploration. A few are well known and most are not - they are the stories of British people and each chapter relies heavily on written evidence. Chapters include the Merchantman St Cross and 22 other Great Yarmouth ships 1297, the Pilgrim ship Cogman 1446, the English royal warship Regent 1512, the Eastindiaman Trades Increase 1614, three pirate ships called Resolution 1684, the 74-gun warship Berwick 1805, the slave ship Eliza of Liverpool 1806, the Arctic exploration ship HMS Fury 1825. The human stories of eight shipwrecks serve as waypoints on the voyage, as the book explores how and why Britain became a global sea power. Each chapter has people at its heart - sailors, seafaring families, passengers, merchants, pirates, explorers, and many others. The narrative encompasses an extraordinary range of people, ships and events, such as a bloody maritime civil war in the 13th century, a 17th century American youngster who stepped from one ship to another - and into a life of piracy, a British warship that fought at Trafalgar (on the French side), and the floating hell of a Liverpool slave-ship, sunk in the year before the slave trade was abolished. The book is full of surprising details and scenes, including England's rudest and crudest street name, what it was like to be a passenger in a medieval ship (take a guess), how a fragment of the English theatre reached the Far East during Shakespeare's lifetime, who forgave who after a deadly pirate duel, why there were fancy dress parties in the Arctic, and where you could get the best herring. 23 illus, maps and many diagrams. 204 pages.