The Great Museum of the Sea: A Human History of Shipwrecks

An immersive dive into the meaning and mystique of shipwrecks

The sea is the largest museum on earth, with more than a million lost ships resting in its depths. Those shipwrecks date back thousands of years, some from civilizations long vanished, others from more recent history. Some are famous, others obscure and unremembered but each has a story to tell.

In The Great Museum of the Sea, archaeologist, museum director, television host, journalist, and award-winning author James Delgado takes the reader on a personal tour of the world's wrecks, including many of the more than a hundred lost ships he has personally discovered and investigated, including Titanic, USS Arizona, and the slave ship Clotilda. The Great Museum of the Sea vividly explains how and why ships experience catastrophe at sea, and why their remains have captured our imagination for millennia.

Shipwrecks engage us in many ways--we treat them as tombs, but also recover them for museums and memorials, and salvage them for treasure. Authoritative and informed by decades of shipwreck expeditions, Delgado's account offers an insider's perspective, taking the reader into the deep and behind the scenes.

Author: James P. Delgado
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 07/01/2025
Pages: 328
Weight: 1.3lbs
Size: 5.50h x 6.10w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780197780756