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Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What remains when a ship vanishes, or a vessel appears with no crew aboard?
In Lost Ships and Lonely Seas, Ralph Delahaye Paine gathers accounts of forgotten voyages, wrecks, and nautical mysteries. Ships disappear without a trace. Others turn up without their crews. Across these short sea stories, the open ocean holds secrets that leave those on shore with questions and little certainty.
Paine brings a journalist's experience of ships and old seaport archives to a storyteller's view of the age of sail. Working sailors stand at the heart of these accounts. Alongside their hard lives, he explores sea law, superstition, and the way a wreck or strange discovery passes from sailors into newspapers, books, and legend.
What you’ll discover
- The sea keeps secrets Explore accounts of missing vessels on an ocean wide enough to swallow every trace.
- Ships without their crews Encounter strange discoveries at sea that leave a vessel behind and its people absent.
- The working sailor's world Meet the hard men whose trade gives these voyages their human weight.
- Where voyages become legend Follow sea stories as they travel from sailor to sailor, then into print.
- Law, superstition, and salt water Discover odd facts and beliefs woven through Paine's vivid tales of maritime adventure.
Who will love it
This book will delight anyone who loves true adventure, old sailing ships, pirates and castaways, and readers who enjoy history told through the diaries of people who lived it.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Sea disasters reveal people under pressure
- Clear thinking turns wreckage into tools
- Kindness can appear among pirates
- Poor leadership turns danger into disaster
- Language gives courage another way forward
- Captivity exposes an uncomfortable contradiction
- Fair rules hold a crew together
- Welcome can overcome a fearsome reputation
- Courage does not depend on rank
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Lost Ships and Lonely Seas
Seven castaways drift on the wrecked Polly, and their captain builds a tea-kettle still to keep the survivors alive.
Challenging5–10 hours to read20 languages
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“Ships are all right. It is the men in them.”
In short
What would you do if your ship rolled onto her side at midnight, the masts were hacked away, and you were left on a floating pile of boards with six other men and one small keg of water? In December 1811 the brig Polly sails from Boston and ends in exactly that state.
Lost Ships and Lonely Seas at a glance
- Reading time
- About 6 h 10 min4 h 55 min fast, 7 h 20 min slow
- Length
- 88,000 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
One captain's cunning keeps a drifting wreck alive
The brig Polly leaves Boston in December 1811. Her crew is Captain W. L. Cazneau, a mate, four sailors and a cook named Moho. Two passengers sail with them, a Mr. Hunt and a nine-year-old girl.
A gale strikes in the dark and the brig rolls onto her side. The men cut the shrouds until both masts fall, and the wreck rolls level again. Seven men remain on a hull that cannot sink, with salt pork, beef and one keg of water. A quart a day makes it last, and Moho lights a fire by rubbing sticks together.
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Details
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- Reading time
- 7 h 0 min
- Level
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Cite this edition
Paine, Ralph Delahaye. Lost Ships and Lonely Seas. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/lost-ships-and-lonely-seas.
Paine, R. D. (2026). Lost ships and lonely seas. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/lost-ships-and-lonely-seas
Paine, Ralph Delahaye. Lost Ships and Lonely Seas. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/lost-ships-and-lonely-seas.
@book{paine2026lost,
author = {Paine, Ralph Delahaye},
title = {Lost Ships and Lonely Seas},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/lost-ships-and-lonely-seas}
}
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What is Lost Ships and Lonely Seas about?
It is a collection of seventeen true sea stories, including shipwrecks, pirate attacks, mutiny, captivity and long drifts in open boats. Paine retells each from old journals and accounts, with comments on the people involved.
Is Lost Ships and Lonely Seas a true story?
Yes, each chapter retells real events, many from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Paine based them on diaries, letters and printed narratives and wrote about a hundred years after most of the events, as he explains.
Who are the main people in the book?
Each chapter has its own people, such as Captain Cazneau of the Polly, David Woodard, Judah Paddock, William Bligh, John Byron, Admiral Graves and King Abba Thulle of the Pelew Islands.
The author
Ralph Delahaye Paine
1871–1925 · American journalist and author
Ralph Delahaye Paine was an American journalist, author, and politician who lived in the United States from 1871 to 1925. He wrote books about ships, sailors, and maritime history. His works include The Ships and Sailors of Old Salem, published in 1908, and The Book of Buried Treasure, published in 1911.
“Ships are all right. It is the men in them.”
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