"The story of the USS Indianapolis is well-known. After delivering crucial components of the atomic bomb that would level Hiroshima in 1945, the Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine in the South China Sea. Of the nearly 1,200 men aboard, 900 survived the torpedoing, spilling into the sea. White tip sharks began attacking the next morning and after four days only 300 sailors were alive to rescue. Less famous are the many stories of ships sinking...

Historian Richard M. Jones recounts fifty stories of lost ships throughout history that are among the most important, infamous, and in some cases tragic ships in the whole of history. Starting at the tiny island of Alderney in 1592, the reader journeys through history, through World Wars I and II, into the age of the passenger ferry and finally to the modern-day migrant issues in the Mediterranean Sea.