Here Be Monsters
Three teenage boys decide to set sail after a night of drinking. They go missing for 51 days.
Three teenage boys decide to set sail after a night of drinking. They go missing for 51 days.
Michael Finkel GQ May 2011 35min Permalink
The Estonia was carrying 989 passengers when it sank in 30-foot seas on its way across the Baltic in September 1994. More than 850 lost their lives. The ones who survived acted quickly and remained calm.
William Langewiesche The Atlantic May 2004 35min Permalink
He was a convicted felon who found a niche in Seattle’s construction boom. As the region’s fortunes rose and fell—and rose again—so did his. Then a fatal boating accident came for Michael Powers’s fairy-tale ending.
James Ross Gardner Seattle Met Aug 2109 30min Permalink
Six young men set out on a dead-calm sea to seek their fortunes. Suddenly they were hit by the worst gale in a century, and there wasn’t even time to shout. The article that eventually became The Perfect Storm.
Sebastian Junger Outside Oct 1994 20min Permalink
An investigation into the crash of the USS Fitzgerald.
T. Christian Miller, Megan Rose, Robert Faturechi ProPublica Feb 2019 1h10min Permalink
Richard Carr, a retired psychologist who had long dreamed of sailing around the world, was in the middle of the Pacific when he started sending frantic messages that said pirates were boarding his boat. Two thousand miles away in Los Angeles, his family woke up to a nightmare: he might be dying alone, and there was almost nothing they could do about it.
Ali Carr Troxell Outside Nov 2018 35min Permalink
The inspiring life and mysterious death of NBA player Bison Dele.
Chris Ballard Sports Illustrated Oct 2013 40min Permalink
Five Mexican fishermen head out with enough supplies for several days. They’re gone for nine months. A story of survival in the South Pacific.
Mark Singer New Yorker Feb 2007 45min Permalink
Inside the worst U.S. maritime disaster in decades.
William Langewiesche Vanity Fair Apr 2018 40min Permalink
Aleksander Doba has spent a great deal of time alone, naked and blistered, aboard a very small boat in the middle of the ocean. It is his favorite thing to do.
Elizabeth Weil New York Times Magazine Mar 2018 25min Permalink
When rescuers found Nathan Carman after seven days at sea, his mother had vanished without a trace. Did he kill her — and, years earlier, another member of his family?
James D. Walsh New York Jan 2018 Permalink
In 1956, an ocean liner named the Andrea Doria sank off the coast of Cape Cod. Half a century later, deep-sea divers—the author included—were still risking their lives to explore it.
Bucky McMahon Esquire Jul 2000 35min Permalink
On the eve of the Civil War, a nightmare at sea turned into one of the greatest rescues in maritime history. More than a century later, a rookie treasure hunter went looking for the lost ship—and found a different kind of ruin.
David Wolman The Atavist Magazine Mar 2017 35min Permalink
The story of an 86-year-old Norwegian man who tired to circumnavigate the globe, solo, in an engineless sailboat he built himself.
Anders Fjellberg Dagbladet Sep 2016 30min Permalink
Transcribed logs from the mysterious voyage reveal terrors of the sea.
"Yesterday was the worst day of my life. The captain said we would be entering the sea of sirens and, if we looked carefully through the mists, we would be able to see the mermaids, but he warned us, grievously, to take great care against being hypnotised by the sounds of the sirens for their sighs and whispers were said to be sensuous and would entice our souls to Hades. Mother and I looked at each other with dread in our hearts as we went up on deck. Mist was all around and nothing could be seen. We heard the mermaids singing. Songs so soft you could feel your heart melt. I held Mother’s hand and realised that the longer I held it the colder it became."
Samantha Memi Monkeybicycle Sep 2014 Permalink
The story of a whale attack.
Gilbert King Smithsonian Mar 2013 Permalink
How the Bounty, a busted-up replica built in 1960 for the film Mutiny on the Bounty, ended up 100 miles out to sea during the height of Hurricane Sandy.
Kathryn Miles Outside Feb 2013 30min Permalink
During WWII, a bomber crashes into the Pacific and the crewmen begin an epic battle against dehydration, exposure, and endless attacks by sharks. Adapted from Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken.
Laura Hillenbrand Vanity Fair Dec 2010 35min Permalink