Title: A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks

Author: David Gibbins

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press 2024

Genre: Nonfiction - History

Pages: 289

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Nonfiction Reader

Where I Got It: Library

The Viking warship of King Cnut the Great. Henry VIII's the Mary Rose. Captain John Franklin's doomed HMS Terror. The SS Gairsoppa, destroyed by a Nazi U-boat in the Atlantic during World War II.

Since we first set sail on the open sea, ships and their wrecks have been an inevitable part of human history. Archaeologists have made spectacular discoveries excavating these sunken ships, their protective underwater cocoon keeping evidence of past civilizations preserved. Now, for the first time, world renowned maritime archeologist David Gibbins ties together the stories of some of the most significant shipwrecks in time to form a single overarching narrative of world history.

Of course I was going to grab the book about shipwrecks. I have a weird obsessions with ghost ships and shipwrecks. Diving into this book, I was hoping for some great shipwrecks stories and information about underwater archaeology. We got some, but then a ton more super detailed history about the time the ships went down. Some of the chapters started to even bore me and I love reading history books. This one would have benefited from a more narrative style than the dry recitation of history with some shipwreck finds thrown in.

Next up on the TBR pile: