Excerpt: "The story of American ships and sailors is an epic of blue water which seems singularly remote, almost unreal, to the later generations. A people with a native genius for seafaring won and held a brilliant supremacy through two centuries and then forsook this heritage of theirs. The period of achievement was no more extraordinary than was its swift declension. A maritime race whose topsails flecked every ocean, whose captains courageous...

The United States Merchant Marine has a tradition of being in the forefront of every American military action and has served with distinction in every conflict. New York Times bestselling author Brian Herbert chronicles the amazing exploits of these gallant seamen, assembling a fascinating array of data from historical documents, government records, diaries, and interviews with surviving veterans. This brilliant history details the heroism, self-sacrifice...

"In the spring of 1943, during a stint in the Merchant Marine, twenty-one-year old Jack Kerouac set out to write his first novel. Working diligently day and night to complete it by hand, he titled it The Sea Is My Brother. Now, nearly seventy years later, its long-awaited publication provides fascinating details and insight into the early life and development of an American literary icon. Written seven years before The Town and The City officially...

In the spring of 1943, during a stint in the Merchant Marine, twenty-one-year old Jack Kerouac set out to write his first novel. Working diligently day and night to complete it by hand, he titled it The Sea Is My Brother. Now, nearly seventy years later, its long-awaited publication provides fascinating details and insight into the early life and development of an American literary icon.

Written seven years before The Town and The City

...

Several months after Pearl Harbor, cabin boy Julio and his loyal Boxer Jack fight to survive after their merchant marine ship is torpedoed by German U-boats. Includes historical facts and a timeline of World War II.

The story of the expeditions of Spanish explorers told through the history of the first American currency: pieces of eight.

A disgraced 19th-century British sailor lives nobly among natives. From the Joseph Conrad novel.

Service in the Merchant Marine means saying goodbye - keep the home fires burning. It is 'loose lips sink ships,' a convoy tiptoeing through a dead-thick fog. It is the ear splitting clatter of ack-acks and cries of 'aircraft sighted all hands.' It is fear, bravery and just doing a job. It is the lifeblood of democracy's arsenal.